Walks Among Thee
by Kay Willow
Summary: Because there are stories about heaven and hell... and then there are stories about Heaven and Hell. [UPDATED: Jan 5th added Chapter 4, the Changeling Child]
1. The Boy Who Didn't Fit In

I'm on a roll. Three fics posted recently! Yufic, Clayfic, and Hellfic! 

Yes. This is the infamous "Hellfic", ladies and gentlemen. If you know what it is, see what you think! If you don't know what it is, then fasten your seatbelts (assuming there are still seatbelts on those ancient artifacts called "cars") and hold on tight, because this is going to be quite a ride. 

WARNINGS: pairings of all three major sexual orientations. Violence, questionable behavior, and eternal damnation. Bizarre setting. Not your average mythology contained herein. Potentially offensive to very, very, very religious people, but not meant to be taken seriously. Humor and confusion and weirdness. 

PAIRINGS: all sorts. Major pairings are Garu/Ernest and Zero/Erts. Other pairings vary wildly, but include Rio/Phil, one-sided Tune>Ernest, past Gareas/Leena, Azuma/Rill, Kuro/Teela, Tukasa/Yamagi, Yamagi/Roose, Roose/Wrecka, and Roose/Wrecka/Yamagi. (I know by now I'm certainly getting weird looks from everyone.) Potential pairings include Kizna/Ikhny, Leena/Tune, Clay/Saki, Hiead/Wrecka, one-sided Rome>Erts, if you must Yu/Kazuhi, pretty much EVERYBODY/Roose-and-or-Wrecka... probably a few I'm missing... 

Good luck. 

* * *

  


WALKS AMONG THEE   
almost a fairy tale   
by Kay Willow   
  
THE TALE OF THE BOY WHO DIDN'T FIT IN   
  
Once upon a time, there lived a young boy, in a village called Serenity. Serenity had been formed many ages ago by a group of religious cultists who worshipped God with all their hearts and believed in peace, unity, and tolerance. They formed a community that they hoped the world would model itself after; even though in the years since their hope had proven false and they had long died out, their values and beliefs remained in the hearts of the people who lived there. 

Serenity was a village that hovered between a world of technology and modernization and a world of sorcery and ancient legend. The young boy, perhaps, had the best of both worlds: his family had made magic into a career and grown wealthy from it, allowing the boy to live in comfort; yet he also understood mechanics and took advantage of his knowledge to make his life simpler, for he had no magic of his own, the "black sheep" of the family. 

In more than one way. For the boy was violent, conceited, and thoughtless; he stood out among the gentle and tolerant people of Serenity with his dark, unpleasant nature. He had a sharp mind but a sharper tongue, and was not easy to get along with. Fortunately for him, his position and influence often made friends for him. 

There was also a girl in Serenity. (Well. Technically there was more than one. But only one who mattered.) The boy had grown up with her, and she was different from the others in the village as well: she was not intimidated by his name or status or rages or insults, would often talk back to him, as rude or even ruder than he himself had been, and refused to let his jibes at her less than affluent family or unfeminine ways bother her at all. In spite of himself, the boy found that this behavior was far more appealing to him than the simpering of his fans or the endless competition with the other boys. More and more, as they grew older, they began spending time with each other. 

By the time the boy had turned seventeen, he had decided that he was in love with the girl, and she reasoned that she probably loved him too. For all that this was not very romantic, they had both come to the conclusion by a not-very-romantic line of thought: basically, that they hated just about every one of the idiots in Serenity except for each other, and so it seemed quite natural that what they had was love. This line of thought was helped to its final conclusion, despite the lack of warmfuzzy emotions or burning passion or never-ending devotion, by a couple of really good bouts of sex in the woods behind her father's house, and eventually getting caught by her father himself. 

So before the boy turned eighteen, he made it official by asking the girl to marry him. After a few days of deliberating, she agreed. Their village was overjoyed, and they tolerated the admiration and good wishes of the people they had always hated, because they could count on each other to understand. 

But such happiness, in fairy tales, rarely lasts for very long. 

Shortly before the wedding, the boy was approached by a stranger, someone he had never before seen in the village. And the stranger warned him that his beloved was marked for death: within six days, she would be killed in her own home by a freak accident. The boy asked, bewildered, who the stranger was talking about. So the stranger clarified that by "beloved" he meant "fiancee". Once that had sunk in, the boy became outraged at the presumption of this nobody, to try and challenge his happiness with unlikely premonitions of death. 

Then the stranger revealed himself in truth: no ordinary mortal, but a demon in disguise. He had looked within the Book of Fate, this demon, and seen within its pages the death of the young man's wife-to-be. And he had come to offer a bargain: in exchange for the boy's soul, the demon would prevent the destruction of their union -- allow them to be together forever. 

The boy considered his dilemma long and hard. His soul was a large price to pay, but how empty would his life be in the middle of nowhere without his ever-present companion, the only person who had understood him? How long could he stay sane without someone to serve as a foil to the relentlessly _good_ people of Serenity? 

He had to agree to the demon's offer, but he was unwilling to sacrifice his entire soul. So the boy consulted what little lore he had actually acquired from the books that he had been forced to read, and recalled one of the foremost laws of treating with demons -- to never accept a bargain as presented. All demons would be willing to barter. Seizing upon the wisdom of the ages and applying it to his own situation, the boy managed to convince the demon to accept only half of his soul for the same prize. 

But the boy had not studied hard enough. The first law of treating with demons was to not treat with them at all. 

* * *

CHAPTER 1 

"Nope! Sorry! Still negative." The demon narrowed slit-pupiled gray eyes and smirked in undeniable triumph. 

Gareas fought the urge to shred something, like the demon's throat. It had wicked-looking claws that he would bet could shred much better than his hands. "So. _Thing_," he said, snapping out the insult in the hopes of making the demon flinch or falter. It only looked even more smug. "Explain to me how my balance is negative again." 

The demon snorted and stalked from one end of the room to the other, moving like a magic-touched panther that had evolved upright, and whipped around to seat itself on a chair -- sitting on the back of it, long tail not hanging limply off the other side but whipping about fiercely, again like a great cat despite its physical similarities to a lizard's tail, toying with its prey. "It's really quite simple, Garu," the horrible thing said, calling him by his nickname and baring long needle-sharp fangs in a gesture only a blind man would mistake for a smile. "You gave me half of your soul. But it's not _gone_ now -- it's just automatically negative. So you are half-and-half before we even start the tally! Then add on all your _many_ sins--" 

"Shut up now," Garu snapped, disgruntled. 

"--like impatience, disrespect, uncharitable behavior, violence, abuse, casual sex--" 

"Shut _up_!" he repeated louder, not caring as he noticed it bristling at his tone. "I get it. But I still don't think you fulfilled your half of the bargain!" 

There was a long moment of utter stillness, the calm before the storm, and then the demon reacted. It stood with infinite slowness and in one fluid motion stepped from the chair to the floor and began stalking forward. And -- as happened every time Gareas entreated it -- only now that it was menacing did he take stock again of how scary it really was. 

The demon was composed almost entirely of long and beastlike limbs, huge leathery wings, and smooth, hairless gray skin. Muscles flowed and bunched under that thick surface, redundant: with those immense clawed hands and powerful haunches it was unlikely that pure strength would ever be an issue for this being. Wild hair crowned its skull, tamed only where it was tucked behind long, almost horizontal pointed ears -- like those you might see on elves in fairy-tale books -- and animalistic gray eyes with pupils mere slits against the flat coldness. 

It was some great nightmarish medley of lizard and jaguar and man, compressed malevolence wrapping lovingly around every feature to make it something truly out of a nightmare. "Demon" scarcely covered all the evil that this thing radiated. 

"I?" the demon began angrily, spitting the word. Garu barely kept himself from flinching at the sound of it. "_I_ haven't fulfilled _my_ part of our bargain? You _dare_ suggest that I am being neglectful, _I_, the crown prince of Hell, son of The Rebel? I who battled Romulus founder of Rome, who convinced Louis XIV to build his palace of gold, who saw the rise and fall of the greats: the Soviet Union, Japan, America... You claim that _I_ have been cheating _you_?" 

Garu had no idea what any of that meant -- Rome? Fourteen Louises? Soviet Union, Japan, America; were those even all people? -- but it sounded very intimidating. He refused to be intimidated anyway; for all he knew, the thing was making it all up. "Yeah, well, none of that makes you anything other than what you are," he sneered, trying to sound as offensive as he could with the nervous sensation that any moment now he was going to get his intestines torn out. "You're a demon, and everyone knows what liars demons are." 

"We never lie," it said immediately, eyes narrowed. "Not when it comes to a contract. We may lead astray, deceive, and manipulate -- but lying in such a moment is against all our principles." 

_Principles? Something like YOU has principles?>_ But even Gareas knew better than to say that aloud. Mama Elidd had raised a jerk, not a fool. You don't say things like that to a demon proven touchy about honor, was one of her favorite sayings. Instead, he pointed out, "But Leena is dead." 

The demon snorted, within a second losing its tension and folding its arms with amusement. "That's because you're too stupid to read between the lines, not because of my dereliction," it retorted easily. "The terms of the contract were _your_ soul for _her_ staying with you... always by your side. Nowhere was her continued living made mandatory!" 

Gareas had heard this explanation before. He had asked the demon to explain it to him every Sunday, when normal people were in church, for the last two years. He hated it even more every time. He wasn't too fond of himself either, hearing it again and again like that, but he hated the demon more for thinking that this was at all fair. 

It continued, "And she's still with you, has been with you each moment of each day except when you're with me, ever since her horrible and untimely death!" 

"But she shouldn't have died at _all_!" he exclaimed, unable to help himself. "I made that bargain with you to save her life -- and you _warped_ it!" 

"I followed it to the letter!" the demon returned, with near-criminally overdramatic indignation. "But the facts are, _Garu_, that your brilliant bargaining saved half of your soul, but said absolutely nothing about your girlfriend's head! All you specified was _keeping her with you_. Well, she's with you! You saved her, all right! Saved her from _Heaven_! Nice job, wonder-boy; do you do encores?" 

Garu choked on a snarl. He was quite sure the demon wouldn't be impressed by it, and could do much better itself. But one more time, just one more time... 

"You thought you could _haggle_ with me, you pathetic little mortal; I've seen more generations than you've seen days, and you tried to outsmart me without any sort of preparation or training. You didn't go and do research, or enlist the aid of a professional theurgist, or even ask for time to think about it before signing my contract. You only _barely_ knew what I was talking about by making a contract at all!" The thing snorted, as though trying to imagine the sort of stupidity it would take to not realize the portent of such a bargain. And it was right, too, which made Garu's mood worse. "Then you thought that my only trick was in the _price_ I demanded. You didn't even _think_ to look at the wording of my payment to you!" 

It circled lazily, taunting him. "And you know what? Even if you hadn't been so dumb as to miss the obvious, I would've gotten you anyway. Even if your half of the bargain was the totally selfless 'I want her to live out her life until she dies a full and natural death of old age, having lived a completely happy life and totally content with her part in the world', I would've ruined it. Even if you'd managed to be so clever, I would have found the loophole. Even that, a perfect request, wouldn't have been good enough. There's nothing in it that says she has to be the way she was before, right? Maybe instead of getting impaled on a piece of scrap metal when that furnace blew in her house, she was merely clipped by a falling support beam, and got amnesia and forgot about everything that had brought you together, and Serenity raised her back to health like one of them? Or maybe the debris damaged her brain in exactly the right way and she found herself retarded, or had been the victim of an accidental frontal lobotomy?" 

This was new. This was very new. The demon had never said this to him before. Gareas could only stand dumbly as it paced around him and the implications sank in. They'd never had a chance bargaining with this being; half of his soul, Leena's very life, had been doomed from the moment it had waltzed into Serenity and enlightened the more unusual member of the most unusual couple living in that dinky little hamlet that his partner wouldn't live to see the end of the week. 

The demon -- that damned _demon_ -- leaned in from behind and whispered in his ear, "You know, I wasn't the one who killed her. That accident really had nothing to do with us; I just happened to see it in The Book. But I'm so glad that you so readily helped me to fuck up a fucked-up situation even _worse_. Humans like you are the reason my job is so easy." 

"You son of a BITCH--" Garu hollered, whipping around to launch himself at the demon, hands first. 

He never got the chance to connect. 

With a movement he couldn't even see, its claws were wrapped around his neck and an arm more solid than marble had lifted him off the ground. 

"Tsk tsk. I wouldn't talk about my Mother that way. She has good ears, and if She hears you, She'll make you sorry for the next several epochs." 

It watched him flail as he dangled helplessly and tried not to choke against the firm grip on his throat. Its teeth were bared again -- this time an actual, real grin of amusement. 

"You've wasted hours and hours of my precious time since your little girlfriend died," it commented amiably. "You call upon me once a week... not even summoning me, because you've got roughly the same magic distribution as especially dead forms of rock, so I don't get any power from the ritual since you don't actually cast anything... And every week it's the same damn thing. You whine, you bitch, and you complain because you can't get a good lay with the woman you deluded yourself into thinking you loved, on account of her being incorporeal and all. I tell you the same thing all the time, and it never sinks in. Tell me, are you really fucking dense, or is it just that you enjoy my company this much?" 

Garu had several offensive things to say to that, but his jaw was held tight and his windpipe was closed up and he had no way to speak. It took all his devoted effort not to just pass out. 

The thing shrugged gracefully and added, "Don't forget who's the boss here, buddy. You amuse me, so I've allowed you to remain alive, with your bitterness and dissatisfaction and constant avoiding of responsibility. But the moment you cease to amuse me, I can have you killed, and your soul will come straight to _me_ in the afterlife. So don't get too ahead of yourself." 

It dropped him to the ground. 

"See you next week," it almost chirped. 

And when next he looked up to sputter a furious rebuttal, the candles he hadn't lit had gone out again, and the incense he hadn't burned had dissipated, and the magic circle he hadn't drawn had vanished. 

_"Zero!"_ he howled. 

The demon was already gone. 

* * *

He emerged out into blazingly pure sunlight that stung his eyes and assaulted his senses nearly as much as the woman who had been waiting for him. 

"Garu! You look pale -- did Zero say anything to you? Did it threaten you? You're not out of the negative yet, are you?" Leena bombarded him the moment he stepped out of the doorway. The sun made her cornsilk-blond hair explode into a riot of golds like the aura of a holy creature, and he wondered if she had really been destined for Heaven in spite of her own sins before he had ruined things for her. 

That thought, of course, pissed him off all over again. "No! No, I'm not!" he snapped. "And I don't want to talk about it!" 

Her eyes narrowed, and she folded her arms crossly over her chest. "Oh, you don't, do you?" she drawled. "Well, might I remind you that you're not in this alone? Your fate decides us both, bubba, and I'm not going to sit around and watch you stew in anger and then eventually snap so you can assault somebody and screw me over as well as yourself!" 

She knew him too well, was the problem. "I wouldn't do something that stupid when I'm already slanted downwards!" he hissed at her, even though they both knew he was lying. "Anyway, don't talk so loud; the people here will have me lynched if they find out that I'm Hell-bound and demon-contracted to boot." 

"The people here can't hear me," Leena pointed out, pointing at a random bystander who was carefully avoiding eye contact with Gareas. "Nor can they see me." As if to prove her point, somebody walked straight through her outflung arm and then gave Garu an odd look. 

She was only a bitch because she was always right, Garu decided, and ignored her. 

That didn't work for long; she followed him when he started walking. "We have to make a coherent effort to raise your balance somehow. We can't keep wandering around the countryside, getting expelled from every law-abiding village along the way, with you sticking out like a sore thumb, for the rest of your life. And it won't be a long life, mind, because eventually we'll stumble on a hamlet large enough to have its own paladin, and they'll sic him on you and then that demon will own you. You don't want that, now do you?" 

"Of course not! I'd like to see it butchered!" he snapped back. 

"Then for Heaven's sake -- literally -- help me think of something to save your pathetic soul!" 

"You just want to save your own!" 

"Yes! But you tied it to yours without ever giving me any say in the matter, so now I'm going to redeem you whether you want it or not, because I don't want to go to Hell!" 

He felt bad for a brief moment. This was his childhood friend, his longtime lover, his intended wife -- and all he'd ever done for her was fail to save her life, curse her to an unlife wandering between the worlds, and then give her grief as she tried to save them both. 

Garu slid a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. Leena walked beside him, brow furrowed and arms folded across her chest. She was clad in a violet dressing gown that she had been wearing when the incident had occurred; her blond hair glistened in sunlight that technically shouldn't have been able to touch her at all, and her eyes glowed like sapphires when the rays fell on them just right. She had never been able to explain to his satisfaction why she was still affected by things like the sun and the wind, but they only served to make her more beautiful. 

And he hated that. What good was a beautiful thing if you couldn't touch it? 

"Maybe we could start a kind of charity auction," she mused aloud. "We'll sell you off to the highest bidder as a torture toy, and all the proceeds go to some noble cause. That way not only are we being charitable, but you're making a martyr of yourself, and we all know The One God loves martyrs." 

Especially if you had to put up with its attitude. 

"So sorry, I'm not for sale, unlike your ethics," he snarled at her. 

"Nobody'd want you anyway," she added practically. "You've got that damned attitude." 

They were very alike. 

"What's there to do in a loser town like this anyway?" he demanded, waving at the scenery. "There's nothing here but do-right types and good-natured civilians. We're not exactly going to nab demons trying to steal holy artifacts in the middle of Good Samaritansville." 

Basik wasn't really a town -- it was actually a fair-sized city, complete with tourist attractions. But there was nothing there to lure true evil: the people were all loving and pure of heart, there was no site of power, and no wild magic had touched it in generations. With no one to corrupt, no power to leech, and no Chaos to take advantage of, Basik had remained shockingly absent of real trouble for a town of its size. 

Like Serenity, the city had been founded by religious cultists after the Collapse. (In the years immediately following the Collapse, cults had been more prolific than humans by a long shot.) The Basikos had rejected the technology of the old world, and also the magic of the new world, but they believed in tolerance and followed a policy of "live and let live". As long as there was peace and all was right with the world, the Basikos didn't care what you did -- as long as you kept it to yourself. 

Leena had told him all that; he seemed to remember his textbooks saying something of the sort as well, but he had mostly used his textbooks for surrogate pillows during classes. That had been, at any rate, her justification for taking them to Basik. They were less likely to stone him to death there. 

But they looked close. 

"Leena, they're staring at me," he snarled, glaring at the group in question. 

"Gareas, they're sixteen-year-old girls and you are wearing skin-tight leather pants. They're not staring at you, they're checking out your ass." She rolled her eyes. "Besides, you're hardly making any effort to be inconspicuous." 

"What do you mean by that?!" 

She stomped a foot. "Garu! Maybe you haven't noticed that you don't quite fit the dress code here!" 

This was also true. Dressed in extremely well-fitted tan leather pants and a clingy dark green tanktop, Garu was a punk surrounded by modestly-attired adults. It almost was as though Basik really did have a dress code: nearly everyone was dressed in varying assortments of black and white and demure gray; most of the men wore slacks and respectable jackets -- light, in deference to the warm spring weather -- and most of the woman wore blouses and long skirts -- with the occasional dressy pants on the more daring of them. Even the children looked like they were prepared, at any moment, in the case of an emergency, to attend someone's funeral. 

So Gareas wasn't _only_ getting stares because he was talking to the thin air inhabited by an invisible dead woman. 

Leena commented thoughtfully, "I feel some chances around here. Minor chances, but we can hardly expect to get you a chance to salvage one of the relics in the Sanctified Grounds or anything." 

"Of course _not_," he snorted. "The miasma there would kill me in seconds." 

"Well, you know what they say about a fella with a pure heart!" 

"He's never been laid?" 

"That he'll salvage all the Sanctified Grounds. Don't be an asshole." Leena paused, and then her hands twitched and flew to her face. "Oh, _Garu_!" 

He knew that tone well. 

"Look at that poor little _girl_! She's _desperately_ in need of your help!" 

Garu looked at the little girl in question. She didn't look very poor -- on the contrary, she looked positively rich. She was dressed almost entirely in technogear, from the gleaming metallic tiara around her forehead (used to communicate over long distances, although who a six-year-old would need to communicate with so desperately with in another city was beyond him) to the tips of her glittering multi-purpose boots (which Garu recognized as being the latest kind, possessing both wheels and jet propulsion, but only when the wearer felt like it). She must be a visitor to Basik; as said, the people here tolerated technology but disapproved of it loudly, especially when in needless excess like this. 

She was also looking more bored than desperately in help. "How so?" he demanded. 

"Her cat is stuck up in that tree!" 

A second glance confirmed this: the little girl was bored, yes, but also staring up at the branches of a tree in which trembled a tiny kitten adorned with a metallic collar that was _also_ some sort of advanced technology, so it was obviously the little girl's. Probably she had already called someone for help and was merely awaiting the arrival of that person. Garu said as much to Leena. 

Leena scowled at him. "Don't be heartless," she scolded. "Besides, this is your chance! Doing a good deed of any sort will pick up your balance at least a little!" 

The one thing Gareas had never been able to force himself to get used to about Leena -- even back when he was sleeping with her and could forgive most of her more obnoxious qualities -- had been her extremely overactive maternal instincts. And there was no avoiding them. No matter what he did or said, once Leena had decided on taking up a cause (no matter how inconsequential, no matter whether it was herself or someone else she inflicted the cause on), there was no talking her out of it. 

_I could stand here and shout at her all day, and that little girl could be ages gone with her cat, and she wouldn't let me alone until I agreed that I should help them,>_ he thought wearily as he headed over to the scene. 

He patted the little girl on the head briefly as he walked by. "I'll take care of this," he growled at her. Then, catching Leena's glare and realizing how evil he'd sounded, he turned back and forced himself to smile at the narrow-eyed child, although he suspected that the smile was rather sickly and pathetic. Without further ado, he began the climb. 

Gareas liked to pride himself on being fit and in shape, but this wasn't much of a tree to show off his athletic prowess on. It was maybe twenty feet tall, and the lowest branches were only just above his forehead. For the little girl, it was a daunting height; for a full-grown adult man, it was a simple matter to grab the branch and swing himself up. 

He acquired a few scratches and a splinter -- which he cursed roundly, to Leena's disapproval -- before reaching the branch where the cat had settled. It cringed away from him, ears flattening against its skull, fur taking on a bristled quality as it hissed. 

_Oh, great.>_

But it was small enough to crush in the palms of his hands, he figured, couldn't weigh more than the average apple. What harm could it do? 

Mama Elidd had always told him, never underestimate a tiny but offended feline. 

The hand he extended towards it was seized by claws that had to be at least an inch long each, digging all the way down into the meat at the base of his thumb. He shouted in pain and tried to jerk his hand away and succeeded in dragging the razor-sharp blades through his palm before the kitten, screeching, leaped from the branch directly into the girl's arms. 

Garu tried not to rail at the heavens. He knew all too well that when they listened at all, they found his suffering dreadfully amusing. He took the other, lesser-wounded hand and grabbed it tightly around his wrist to staunch the bleeding. After a long, long moment that he used to get control of his temper, he called down to the little girl, "Sorry about that, it doesn't appear to like me. You okay?" 

She clutched the monster to her chest and cried, "Don't you talk to me! Pervert!" 

Gareas stared blankly as she ran off. "What the _fuck_?" 

Leena hummed and looked up at him. "I think she misinterpreted your pat on the head." 

Garu turned his stare on her. Words failed him for a long moment. "Are you trying to tell me," he said thinly, "that my kind gesture was ruined because... her parents are neurotic?" 

"Well, something like that..." 

"This is so not my day," he growled as he dropped to the ground, somewhat awkwardly with only one hand. 

He patiently followed Leena's instructions on how to properly bandage the wound, using what little supplies he had in his knapsack. He had been, repeatedly over the last several years, grateful that Leena had forced him to bring along a first aid kit, although he'd sooner kill himself than let her know. 

"Let's see what other brilliant notions you have today to help in my redemption," he gritted. 

Ignoring that with the ease of long practice, Leena closed her eyes and tried to _feel_ out a situation. She'd tried to explain it to him before, but it had gone right over his head; all he knew was that every now and then, when something major was about to happen, Leena would be able to tell in advance. 

But apparently there was nothing happening; she opened her eyes again and looked around at the physical scenery. Once again, she didn't find whatever she was looking for; she started moving forward determinedly, muttering under her breath, "Nothing here, we're out in the domestic area, maybe out in the city proper we can find a robbery or something to foil..." 

"What's with this 'we'?" he grumbled, but followed anyway. He didn't have much choice -- if either of them strayed too far, Leena would be snapped right back to his side like a rubber band, and then she would snipe at him until he went wherever she wanted to be. 

Oh, how he cursed the name Zero. 

"In some universe," he commented casually, prompting Leena to give him a strange look, seeing as how she hadn't been privy to the first half of the topic, "in some way, I will be Zero's superior, and I will take a lesson from its book and _enjoy_ making it suffer." 

"Now how is that possible?" Leena asked, reasonably. "It's always going to be a demon and you're always going to be some punk nobody, right?" 

Garu drew himself up, dignified. "In a parallel universe, it's possible." 

"But--" 

_"Leave me my dreams, would you, woman?!"_

Leena perked up. "Look, Garu! That old woman at the intersection? You can help her across the street." 

Gareas stared at her, dumbstruck. "...help an old lady cross the street? Who the _fuck_ do you think I am?" 

But _that look_ had come into her expression again. She wouldn't let Gareas leave until he had satisfied her wishes. 

He made a token protest anyway. "What precisely is she in danger _from_? A horse-drawn carriage?" 

"What if a car comes by?" 

"Leena! If somebody was rich enough to own an artifact like a car, _what would they be doing HERE?_ Driving it, no less, like it's some sort of toy!" 

Leena's eyes narrowed. 

That was the line, right there, and if he crossed it, then he could look forward to the next several weeks of endless griping, complaining, and arguing. Which was pretty much all he got from her anyway, but it was the principle of the thing. So Garu threw up his hands in exasperation and walked over to the old woman standing by a street-lamp. 

"Excuse me, lady?" he said stiffly. 

She was a short, round woman in a bright orange-and-green dress -- practically a muumuu -- that was much too thin for outdoor wear, because Gareas had the sickening feeling that he'd be able to see her underthings through it if he really wanted to. She wore enormous horn-rimmed glasses and a huge red hat with a feather sticking out of it, and leaned on a thick pearl-handled cane. At the moment she was gazing at him suspiciously. 

"Can I help you?" she demanded. 

He forced on a bright smile that he suspected was exceedingly unctuous, especially compared to the one he'd used on the little girl. "No, ma'am, I was wondering if I could help you," he said in a tone that would have professional suck-ups writhing in shame. "I saw you waiting here and wondered if you wanted some assistance in crossing the street?" 

She glared at him warily while he tried not to count the seconds he was grinning pleasantly. "Okay," she said after a minute and twenty-one seconds. 

_What the hell kind of a response is that?!>_ He extended one hand in a gentlemanly fashion and helped her from the curb to the cobbled street. 

It seemed like every step was a mile running. After her initial reticence, Granny opened up and started babbling on a mile a minute. Gareas wasn't sure he could stand the excitement of it. 

"I was waiting for my grandson, you see, and he said he'd meet me in front of the City Hall but he always mistakes the library for City Hall, he's a bookish sort and it's the only building he really knows in all Basik except maybe my house. I'm so excited to see him again, he's such a dear boy, he really is, but he lives all the way in Meralyn and he never gets any vacation time. He goes to the College there, you know, Pelet, and it's very prestigious, so we're quite proud of him even if he never comes to visit anymore. But he wrote me and said that he was going to come and see his dear old granny again, and he told me where and when, and the first thing I said to myself was, 'There he goes again, I bet he's thinking City Hall when he really means the library!' But I went out anyway, and I put on my nicest dress for the occasion..." 

"You call _that_ nice?" Garu gritted as he practically hauled the old woman up onto the curb. "I call it _blinding_." 

They stared at each other for a long moment, Garu unable to believe that he'd let that slip out, and Granny trying to process the sentiment entirely. 

Then she wound up and smacked her cane across his head with the kind of force that would render a less thick-skulled man comatose. As it was, he staggered backwards, and his arms flung up instinctively to shield himself from the rain of blows that followed. 

"You horrible man!" she shrieked, making passing riders slow from a brisk trot to get a better glimpse. "You wretched, wretched, wretched soul! Saying such a thing to a kindly old woman like me!" 

"You are _definitely_ having some sort of problem with description!" he shouted back. "That dress is _not_ nice, and you are _sure as hell_ not kindly!" 

She rapped him hard across the kneecaps suddenly, sending him sprawling to the ground. While he howled out invectives and nursing his injured limbs she stalked off, bearing herself proudly in her voluminous neon sundress. She retained this elegant posture even when he managed to shove himself to his unsteady feet and holler more curses at her back. 

Leena sighed, behind him. "Nicely done, Garu." 

Garu snarled soundlessly and exited the other way, trying for the same dignity the old woman had attained -- or even just not limp away from the scene. He failed miserably. It was like all of Basik was watching him go and laughing behind their hands, remembering their religious goodness and kindness even in the face of... that. 

_I wonder what I would have to sell to Zero to convince it to shatter this city down to its individual air particles?>_

Then -- "Wait, Garu!" Leena said urgently. 

"What?" he snapped. 

"All of a sudden -- just now -- everything changed! The whole aura! Something went wrong, a demon is here--" 

"A demon!" The involuntary exclamation was unfortunately-chosen; instantly, half the street turned to level him with glares in varying degrees of accusation. 

"--the sheer randomnity of its appearance after so many generations of unrest made a swirl of chaos that bent the threads of fate all around Basik," Leena reported, tense. 

That meant absolutely nothing to him, but her next words did. 

"Gareas! Someone is going to die, right here, any moment now!" 

Instantly on the alert (words like "death" triggered something almost like optimism in his heart -- if someone was going to be killed and he stopped it, he was practically guaranteed a shift in alignment!), Gareas looked around carefully. "Who is it? Can you pick out who it is?" 

"Not... not precisely here... Near here..." 

But Garu had been distracted by a young man wandering around, calling out to people. "Ah, Marca! Have you seen my grandmother around here? Meredith? She's about so tall, really bad dress sense..." 

A reedy woman called back, "Yes, I just saw her head down that way. But why was she was waiting for you _here_, at the library?" 

"I don't know," the young man said crossly. "I told her to meet me at City Hall, but she has _convinced_ herself that I have the library and City Hall confused. I swear she's gone senile--" 

_Hah! I knew it!>_

At that moment, a sudden sound like a gunshot rang through the air. Everyone froze to listen -- guns were highly illegal all across the land, ownership punishable by life imprisonment. It couldn't have been a gun. So what was it? 

An unearthly squeal heralded a deep, consistent roaring -- and then, suddenly, in a silver-dark metallic streak, the source of the noise was right there, in the streets, racing down the cobblestones at ridiculous speeds. 

It was a _car_. 

Gareas was so bewildered by the sight of a car in Basik, of all places, that he nearly didn't think about the sounds that had come from it earlier. 

"Garu," Leena said hesitantly. "I think that car hit someone a little further down the road." 

He broke into a run almost before she'd finished speaking. 

There was a crowd at the site; he had to shove and elbow his way to the front and then nearly recoiled when he saw the limp, bloodied form lying there. Refusing to allow himself the disgusted reaction, he turned back to the crowd and shouted, "Hey! Hey! HEY!" 

After a bewildered moment, everyone paused to give him expectant looks, clearly waiting for him to give them some kind of order. That meant, he realized blankly, that he had to actually think up an order to give them. And since when had he been a paramedic? 

Wait, that's right -- medic. 

"Has anybody fetched a doctor?" he called. 

The entire crowd, as one, shook their heads. But nobody moved. They frowned and muttered amongst themselves and directed disapproving gazes at the body and Gareas' clothes. He distinctly heard mutters of 'demon' in there, which made him extremely nervous about drawing attention to himself this way. 

"Well? Why not?" he gritted through his teeth. 

One of the bolder women in the crowd pointed out, "Well... he's not one of us." 

"Yes," said an elderly man, "he's just a visitor." 

Gareas turned around and forced himself to look at the victim. The poor man -- couldn't be any older than Gareas -- was indeed wearing a long, extremely intricate black robe. There was a silver sash tied around his shoulder, and he was much too pale and narrow to be a native of Basik, where most people were golden-blond and full-fleshed. 

"Those robes are of Astutia Academy," Leena whispered in his ear, gazing down at the crumpled figure without being affected by the bloody corpse-like quality of it. "He's from the mage school, Garu; he's a sorcerer of some kind. And he's wearing a silver sash..." She frowned. "I can't remember what branch of sorcery uses silver..." 

"Is he still alive?" he asked under his breath. He couldn't look that close. He didn't mind carnage, but this was just... pointless. Nobody got anything from this man's suffering. 

"Yeah," said a fearless boy in the crowd, assuming Gareas had been talking to him and not the invisible dead woman who was his partner. The boy wandered up and kicked the sorcerer in the arm, earning him a feeble groan. "See?" he said proudly. 

"Get away from him, you little monster!" Garu snapped. Then he turned around to the mob of Basikos and demanded again, "Why hasn't anybody called a doctor?!" 

Some of them chuckled, as if this were of course perfectly obvious. "Why," one of them repeated, shaking his head. "Why, he's one of those heathen magic-users. And a demon summoner to boot." 

_A demon summoner?!>_

"We should pray for his soul," a woman said, and the others nodded, clearly under the impression that this was the best they could do for such a misguided youth. 

Garu tolerated this for about five seconds before they actually started kneeling instead of fetching someone who could save the guy's life. "_Fuck_ this prayer shit!" he hollered. (A little girl screamed from within the crowd at this blasphemy.) "He doesn't need blessings, he needs _help_!" 

More silence. Leena sighed behind him. 

"Don't you people have any doctors?" he asked thinly. 

"Well... no," one of them said cluelessly. 

For a stupefied moment he could only stare at them. Then he tried again. "How about a medic?" 

"...a medic...?" 

"No... no, not one of those either." 

He twitched. "Do you have," he said very slowly, "a healer?" 

Someone in the back of the mob brightened. "Oh, yes!" he said enthusiastically. "We have a healer! Three, even!" 

"Three aren't necessary, thank you," Garu told him, almost shaking with the effort of not killing someone. "Just go get _one_ of them -- quickly, please -- that would be splendid." 

"Well, I'll be more than happy to help such a polite person," the bystander said with approval -- making Garu's eye twitch again uncontrollably -- and ran off. 

Leena muffled a snicker, but not very well. "At least you're learning how to handle them," she volunteered. 

Garu gritted his teeth again and ignored that. "Can anyone tell me exactly what happened here?" he demanded of the remaining crowd. 

They stared at him, like _he_ was the crazy one. At length, a girl said, "Um... a big blackish blur came out of nowhere and hit this guy?" 

"I'll bet it was a pegasus!" 

"No, don't be silly, would a pegasus be killing people? It must've been a _Touched panther._" 

"What if it was a cerberus loosed from Hell?!" 

"We're all going to die!" 

_"SHUT UP!" _Garu screamed. It felt really good, got rid of some of his tension, _and_ made them all stop babbling hysterically. He cleared his throat and informed them coolly, "That was a car." 

The Basikos looked at each other with increasingly awed expressions. 

"A... a car?" 

"You mean, like, _forbidden technology_ car?" 

"The kind of car that could be found in the _Sanctified Grounds_?!" 

"What would such a thing be doing here?" 

_That's what I want to know!>_ Gareas asked, "It was a black car? You're sure?" 

Everyone nodded as one. They didn't know what on earth it had been, but it had certainly been black. 

"Did anybody get a good look at the driver?" 

Pause. Then, "...driver?" 

"Yes. Somebody had to be _driving_ the car," Garu pointed out. "They don't move on their own." 

"Oh." Another pause. "I didn't see anyone. Did you, Rin?" 

"No, I didn't." 

"We didn't see anyone either." 

Garu was about ready to give up on this whole detective/investigator thing when Leena murmured, "Garu. Remember that there's a demon involved in this. Do you think it might've possessed the car to run over the summoner?" 

That hadn't occurred to him before. But the moment the idea began to sound feasible, someone piped up, "Wait. I think I saw someone." 

Eagerly, he turned to the young man. "Really? Who? What did he look like? Did you recognize him?" 

"Well..." The man in question turned to his obviously newly-wed wife -- Garu _hated_ newlyweds -- and then after a brief whispered consultation, nodded and said, "On the left side of the car, right?" 

"Yes!" 

"There was this... boy, I guess. He was really short, which is probably why nobody saw him," he opined. "I remember he had ragged purple hair, and was wearing really strange clothes." 

"What do you mean by 'strange'?" 

"Well... He wore red. But there was, like, a black buckle around his shoulders... and lower, I think." 

_...what the...? A safety belt? A car with a safety belt survived to this day and age?>_ For a brief moment, Gareas was thankful that Uncle Harre had been such a huge fan of the ancient automobiles. Otherwise he'd have no idea what a clue that was. _Cars were manufactured ages and ages ago -- before the Collapse, and possibly WAY before the Collapse, and the Collapse was generations ago. All those little not-quite-leather seatbelts ought to be long eroded away. And what sort of joyrider would wear a safety belt anyway?!>_

He considered asking if they'd noticed the make of the car, but that was obviously pointless. 

Leena was musing, "A demon summoner was the target, so I can't believe that the demon's appearance had nothing to do with this. If that was the demon's car, and the demon was driving it, then perhaps it was rebelling against its master, and struck at the demon summoner while there was no protective circle to--" 

"The correct term, actually, Miss, is theurgist, not demon summoner." 

Gareas whipped around to tell off whoever was picking apart their _political-correctness_, for crying out loud, but found himself stopped short. He'd somehow lost the use of his voice box. 

The villager who'd run off to fetch a healer had instead returned with an angel. A slender young man, elegant and graceful, stood before them, form draped with long folds of white cloth that almost glittered in the sunlight. His appearance was similar to Leena's in coloring -- golden blonde hair, sapphire blue eyes, milk-pale complexion -- and yet so, so much more. 

While Gareas stood there, unable even to breathe lest the angel find some fault in it, the vision said serenely, "I am Ernest Cuore, son of the Cuore healer's clan, and I am here to help you." 

~tsuzuku~   
~to be continued~ 

* * *

Heh. Well, everyone, what did you think? 

--Kay, almost feeling happy about this one   
MK Info Site -- http://dualpotential.net   
MK Journal RP -- http://rpg.dualpotential.net   
AIM: Savinsilk 


	2. The Misbegotten Twins

What sort of hideous irony is it that as I was finishing this chapter, my Winamp randomly selects Tori Amos' "Crucify" and a very creepy and desolate skin of young Muraki from Yami no Matsuei called "Fragile"? 

WARNINGS: pairings of all three major sexual orientations. Violence, questionable behavior, and eternal damnation. Bizarre setting. Not your average mythology contained herein. Potentially offensive to very, very, very religious people, but not meant to be taken seriously. Humor and confusion and weirdness. 

PAIRINGS: all sorts. Major pairings are Garu/Ernest and Zero/Erts. Other pairings vary wildly, but include Rio/Phil, one-sided Tune>Ernest, past Gareas/Leena, Azuma/Rill, Kuro/Teela, Tukasa/Yamagi, Yamagi/Roose, Roose/Wrecka, and Roose/Wrecka/Yamagi. (I know by now I'm certainly getting weird looks from everyone.) Potential pairings include Kizna/Ikhny, Zero/Ikhny, Leena/Tune, Clay/Saki, Hiead/Wrecka, one-sided Rome>Erts, if you must Yu/Kazuhi, pretty much EVERYBODY/Roose-and-or-Wrecka... probably a few I'm missing... 

Good luck. 

* * *

  
  
WALKS AMONG THEE   
almost a fairy tale   
by Kay Willow 

THE TALE OF THE MISBEGOTTEN TWINS 

Once upon a time, an archangel fell from Heaven. 

But this archangel was not alone. Many angels and archangels and good holy people were lost in the Fall. And those who had fallen came to dwell in a place buried deep within the fabric of the universe, a place guarded by three ferocious dragons who patrolled the fire-laced shores of the great rivers and seas there, a place where the scorned could come and find (eventually) their revenge. Today, we call those who were lost "demons". 

Right? 

Perhaps not. 

One such archangel lost created, from the fabric of the universe in her grief, twin children to call her own. These infants bore the scraggled beginnings of feathered white wings, slumbered in her arms in peace and gentleness, and brought joy and happiness to all who saw them, even in the hateful darkness of Hell. 

Or so the story goes. 

But one day the infants began to change. Their young feathers fell out, leaving thick membranous fleshy wings naked to the glaring light. Their serene sweetness was replaced with a malicious delight of suffering. And the rest of Hell began to change to suit them, because these two children would grow to become their princes, two overlords battling each other for dominion. The brothers hated each other with an undying passion, for as long as they both lived, neither of them could truly claim to be the next ruler of Hell. 

And is this the truth? 

It's certainly closer. 

While they were still morphing into the creatures they would become, their mother came to the place where they rested. She had spent many long hours thinking, and finally had returned to the stuff of creation and made yet two more infants to accompany the first children. 

In one hand was carried a tiny lion cub. She put the cub down next to one of the infants, and watched. Instead of turning on the newborn thing, the demon-child examined her closely, inspecting the newcomer with deeply ingrained suspicion. The cub, instead of attacking or growling or fleeing before him, did nothing more exciting than yawn and curl up to sleep. This lack of frantic reaction won over the young demon, and he curled up beside her and promptly drifted off as well. And the archangel, seeing this, knew that they would be together forever as brother and sister, the changeling demon and the werelioness, playing and growing and learning and eventually ruling together with a firm hand. 

Her other offering was a wolf pup. She laid the infant down next to the second child, and watched. The demon-child reacted violently to the new presence, immediately attacking and savaging her before the defenseless canine had even the chance to signify her submission. And the young demon howled his triumph over the weak, tearing apart the corpse with unwarranted viciousness. And the archangel, seeing this, knew that he would live to be solitary, never wanting or needing support from others, and would keep to himself until his power was such that he could establish himself as a dictator over all of Hell. 

And who could say which child would make the better king? Mayhap Hell could be guided only by a ruthless hand; or perchance the rule it begged was a sage and fair one. The archangel knew this, and allowed both children to grow as they must. 

Until the day when the judgement was made -- 

-- and only one of them would survive. 

* * *

CHAPTER 2 

"But if you win over the Ferro camp," Roose pointed out reasonably, "you'll lose the Eshlid and the Besradi." 

Zero hummed and nodded his agreement before presenting the counter-argument. "But there are three times as many Ferro as there are Besradi and Eshlid put together." 

"But it takes _six_ Ferro to get the brainpower of a single Besradi," Wrecka noted with a grin. Someone at a nearby table hooted his support. She whipped around and snapped, "How many times do I have to tell you to shut up?! You're lucky you're even allowed in His Highness' presence, now _shut your mouth_ and don't speak out of turn again!" 

"Why don't you just kill him?" Clay asked her, rolling his eyes. 

Wrecka rolled her eyes back at him. "Because he's Gethle. We need the support of the Gethle." 

"Are you really winning anybody's support by shrieking like a harpy?" Kizna wanted to know, smirking. 

"Please. He's not worthy of licking my feet, much less actually speaking to Zero, and everybody knows it." Wrecka leveled a coy smile at him for good measure, but it was wasted; his head was bent deeply over the paperwork and he pretended not to see it. "Besides," she settled for retorting, "at least I'm being useful. You're just sitting there and mooching off your kinship with our revered leader." 

"I am actually performing a very important function," the werelion said haughtily, and then proceeded to sit there and do nothing. Wrecka and Roose scowled at her in unison. 

Tukasa, from the end of the great table, hummed. 

Kizna cocked an ear to listen and announced, "Tukasa thinks that we should stop fighting and get on with business. Saki?" 

Saki stood up and shuffled the papers in front of her, then cleared her throat. "First of all, the Vyusher Forest is complaining about that rogue demon masquerading as a lumberjack again, and to be fair it really has nothing to do with their punishment--" 

Roose murmured, "Turning someone into a tree is a stupid punishment anyway." 

Wrecka shook her head, wide-eyed. "I think being a tree would be a horrible punishment! I mean, how would you--" 

Saki grimaced. "_Being_ a tree isn't the punishment, you know, you two..." 

"Leave it," Zero said abruptly. 

"Leave it?" she echoed, startled. 

"Yeah, leave it. Vyusher is _Hiead's_ responsibility. Let him do his job for once, instead of running around killing everyone on his side at random," he clarified, smirking. "Does _our_ Forest have any problems?" 

Saki flipped a page on her record and shook her head. "Nope. Pretera Forest is golden." She rubbed the tip of one of her ears as she read. "Literally. Some of the trees are starting to blossom with gold-glowing flowers -- signs of being ready to graduate." 

"Graduation," Zero said cheerfully. "How is that going?" 

Clay straightened as if somebody had called his name. "Graduation is currently at twenty-three-point-sixteen percent," he recited. 

"Is that an accurate statistic?" Roose asked innocently, and then laughed when Clay dissolved into a furious rant about how his numbers were _never_ wrong. 

"Okay, okay. I think the Ero need to stop antagonizing people," Zero commented, perfectly amiably so as to let them know that no offense was intended. Roose and Wrecka pouted, again in unison, but settled themselves more comfortably. 

"Where are the new souls being distributed?" Kizna asked. 

Clay shrugged, as if this were unimportant, and hauled out the Book which Lucifer had entrusted into his care. He flipped through the pages and then stated, "Patterns remain pretty much the same as they ever have with the exception of the final rings, which have been getting a lot of new people courtesy of the nuclear winter proliferation of cults and self-interest. So there's been plenty of betrayal -- Judecca and Ptolomea in particular are bordering on overflowing -- and plenty of opportunity for a seemingly earnest believer to fall prey to simony." 

Zero nodded. "Do we still have records from before the nukes?" 

"Are you kidding?" Clay gave him a level stare. "Do you have any idea how much we lost in the Collapse?" 

He didn't, really, because his memories of the time before the nuclear winter were rather spotty and uncertain. He had the distinct feeling that Hell had run itself back then, and he had spent most of his time goofing off and playing with mortals. Clay, who had been very young then himself, probably didn't remember either. Zero was quite glad for that. 

Saki said hurriedly, "Well, never mind what we can't bring back." She hadn't been born when the nukes were launched, or even at the Collapse that followed in the wake of the winter. It made her feel inadequate. "Ancient history isn't going to help us now." 

"I wouldn't call it ancient," Kizna pitched in. Saki glared at her. They hadn't been getting along lately -- Zero wondered if they'd had a fight or something. "It's only a few millennia, I mean; since when has four thousands years, give or take a few centuries, been 'ancient' history around here--" 

She was interrupted by a storming noise out in the corridor. The high table turned as one to stare at the great double doors at the far end of the hall. Tukasa hummed her disapproval. Roose and Wrecka groaned in unison. 

The doors flew open, and Yamagi burst in excitedly. 

"Did you guys see it? Did you hear? Wasn't it cool? And I did it right, too, no mistakes this time!" He looked around, eager to see their reactions to his lack of news. 

"How could we have known what you've done, Yamagi?" Wrecka pointed out. 

"We've been kind of busy here," Roose seconded. 

Zero suggested pointedly, "Maybe you can tell us when we're _not_ busy." 

Yamagi scowled, a fleeting expression that was gone as quickly as it had appeared. "I got out my car, and I brought it to Basik--" 

"Basik?" Clay repeated, startled. "You brought a car to _Basik_?" 

"Yes!" He was practically preening. Zero caught Tukasa's eye and cocked a head at the newcomer. She pretended not to see it. "And I found a theurgist there and I _ran him over,_ isn't that great?!" 

Roose put his head in his hands. 

After a brief moment, Zero said delicately, "You hit a demon summoner with your car." 

"Yes!" But some of the elation had gone out of him at their disappointing response. He gave Roose a dubious look and asked Wrecka, "I did good, right?" 

She smiled at him, a smile that no one could've mistaken for real, and assured him, "Yes. Yes, it was a good job." 

"A very good job," Roose muttered, with an odd tone that could've been fighting tears or laughter. 

Tukasa hummed, high and distant. Yamagi shot her a hurt expression and bounded up to Zero. "You think I did a good job, don't you, boss?" he asked again hopefully. 

Zero waved at him absently and addressed the others. "Well, I suppose we'll have to take care of this first. Who wants to draft a formal apology to the Theurgists' Guild?" 

"I'll do it!" Wrecka volunteered immediately. 

Roose revived quickly in the face of this challenge, and barely a second later had insisted, "No, I want to!" Within three seconds they had dissolved into meaningless bickering, and within ten they had wandered off on a tangent and appeared to be quarreling about fair treatment for the Neutrals. 

Zero rolled his eyes at Kizna. "How about neither of you take care of it?" he interrupted when one of them paused for air. Together, they turned to stare at him blankly. He elaborated, "Yamagi ran over one of their mages. This isn't one of those things we can let you guys handle." 

"Why not?" Roose demanded, indignant. 

"Because it's not going to be solved by playing innocent like he had nothing to do with us, and then seducing the spokesman. If you do that, they'll just take him off duty and send up another one. We can't sex our way out of this one." 

"We can sex our way out of anything," Wrecka reminded him, smirking. "That's what being a succubus is all about." 

"Incubus," Roose purred. The two of them gave each other sultry looks. 

_Tonight is _so_ going to be another contest to see which of them can seduce more people,>_ Zero realized with amusement. He couldn't tell if they were "on" or "off" this week, but whether they were sleeping together or not, they were at "odds" instead of "evens". Zero found their odd weeks to be much more interesting than their even weeks: they always agreed in the latter mood, but for the former they consistently challenged each other at a thousand different things, even if they were on. 

He slammed a fist down on the table to recapture their attention. "I said you _can't_. Are you going to fuck every theurgist in the Guild? That's what it'll come down to before they give up!" 

Wrecka shrugged. "Why not?" 

_Stupid to pose sex like a question. The motto of their type is "Why not?" in regard to anything involving sex.>_ Zero said reasonably, "Not even you could, Wrecka. That many so quickly would wear you to a thread." 

"Then Roose will help out. Right?" 

"Oh, Wrecka-chan -- you're willing to share with me?" Heated exchange of glances. 

If this wasn't one of their on weeks, they were definitely moving _into_ one of their on weeks. "I said _no_, you two." 

Roose pouted and rested his chin in one hand. "You could come with us," he suggested innocently. "It's been a while since we all played together." 

The demons around the table without Ero blood were all giving Zero flat looks by now. He could practically hear them thinking _Sure, he lets them get away with this sort of thing, because he's half-Ero himself._ If he could explain to them and make them understand that there was no way to make an incubus or succubus _stop_ thinking about sex, then he would, but those who weren't Ero never really understood. 

"I don't want to 'play'," he told them. "I want to get this work done." 

Wrecka frowned at him. "You know, it's been _weeks_ since you slept with either of us," she pointed out. "It can't be healthy to not have sex in so long." 

The concept of "abstinence", to their kind, was rather akin to the concept of "death". It happened sometimes, and it was a horrible, very bad thing when it happened to you, and nobody ever volunteered for it. "Love" was something wonderful, and in that sense it was to be shared. With everyone. Repeatedly. 

Truth told, Zero was kind of tired of living like that. 

"Is there any more official business that needs to be handled before I take off for the day?" Zero asked instead. If there was any such thing as luck, the pair would take that as the change of topic it was and not try to bring up anything further on that subject. 

They didn't, of course. Wrecka looked scandalized at the very insinuation that there was something other than sex that mattered in this discussion, and Roose demanded, "Why do you brush it off? What's that supposed to mean?" Then, suspiciously, Wrecka added, "Does this have something to do with your mysterious dis--" 

"You can't just _take off,_" Saki said, apparently outraged. She tugged on her ear again. Zero wondered in a fit of irrelevancy why she tugged on just that one ear when she had six to choose from. "Even if you've taken care of everything else, _Lucifer_ wants to see you." 

Several of the listening representatives shied away visibly. One even sketched the sign of the cross in the air before herself. Zero frowned. "Why?" he asked practically. 

"I wasn't told why. Nor any particular time." Saki looked nervous at the suggestion that she should have spoken with _the_ Devil any longer than she absolutely had to. 

Clay volunteered, "Probably something to do with the Succession. Hiead was also called. So my sources tell me." His eyes, behind distortive lenses, glinted. 

Zero didn't ask about these sources, although he'd been longing to find out about them for decades. Clay never let a single detail slip about them, but through them he seemed to know everything that happened anywhere in Hell. He was the only person not in the Highest Circle who knew the reasons behind Zero's mystery absences. 

"Just what I need; more politics." Zero folded his arms behind his head, threading claws through his hair, bored. "So what's left to discuss before I take off... to see our ever-so-brilliant Morning Star?" 

"You mustn't talk about Lord Lucifer that way," Wrecka murmured fearfully. Ero-blooded demons were always afraid of anyone who refused to be bedded. Satan was among their ranks. 

Kizna, speaking suddenly, reminded them, "We still have no solution for Yamagi's situation." 

Yamagi, who had settled obediently next to Tukasa at her crooked finger and allowed her to groom him while she hummed discordantly, bristled at the comment. "It doesn't need to be fixed!" he insisted. 

Roose patiently began explaining to him that yes, it does need to be fixed, you can't just run over a student at Astutia Academy and not have to pay reparations, there are contracts involved, but Zero's attention was on his sister. Kizna's eyes were glassy and distant, and on closer inspection, her breathing was staggered and laboring. She was working _much_ too hard on the task he had covertly assigned her... 

"Well," Yamagi muttered dubiously, "I guess..." 

Startled out of his train of thought, Zero very nearly snarled in response before catching himself. Yamagi was an imp, not a true-born demon, and imps were notorious for how impressionable they were. Didn't want to scare Tukasa's pet _away_... She might feel it necessary to speak or something then. 

"...if it's going to be such a big deal," Yamagi continued, "why don't_ I_ issue a formal apology? Shouldn't that be good enough?" 

"That would be so _helpful_!" Wrecka gushed, casting Yamagi an adoring glance that Roose immediately added the weight of his own to. Yamagi melted. Another characteristic of imps was that they imprinted in their first months as demons. Yamagi had imprinted four times: first to Tukasa, who was his sponsor, and then to Zero, who was his superior, and then to Roose and Wrecka, who had been the first to (albeit deliberately with this intent) treat him with affection. Imps were at the very bottom of the great food chain of Hell -- above only the damned souls themselves. 

"That'll be good," Zero said abruptly, forcing himself to smile when Yamagi looked at him hopefully. "Write your apology down on parchment. I'll deliver it to the theurgists." 

"Oh, you will, will you?" Wrecka murmured. 

"Quite an inauspicious task for the Prince of Hell," Roose seconded. They smirked at each other. 

_If Clay enjoys anything more than he enjoys hinting at his knowledge, then I don't know what it is. But whatever it is, it has GOT to be safer for his continued good health,>_ Zero thought direly, giving the demon in question a fierce glare. Clay gave him a pleasant, friendly smile in return, and reached up. As he drew down his glasses, Zero blinked -- very slowly -- and by the time he opened his eyes again, Clay was settling the lenses back into place. Clay had acquired a nasty habit somewhere of tipping his glasses down to peer pointedly over the rims, but what he often forgot was that this maneuver tended to be highly fatal, seeing as how direct eye contact with Clay would turn any lesser demon to stone. Of course, Zero couldn't be seriously hurt by such a thing, but it did tend to cause painful arthritis-like stiffness in his joints that he just wasn't fond of. 

"Ever thought about investing in contact lenses, Clay?" Zero proposed innocently. "Even if their time is generations gone, I'm sure we could find someone to make them for you." 

"I bet we could ask the demonologists," Clay returned with similar tone. 

Zero twitched. What the hell were demonologists? Was that another of those incorrect terms for theurgists? Refusing to dignify that comment with an answer -- the other option was guessing, and Clay would never let him live an incorrect guess down -- he began to stand. Instantly, so did every other demon in the room. 

"Wait, wait, there's still something we need to talk about," Saki pressed. Zero slid back into his seat, enjoying the fact that the others hurried to sit as well. It was a crime punishable by death to disobey a signal made by a Demon Prince during a formal meeting. Life in Hell was harsh, and Zero had fun making it that way. 

"Go on," he encouraged her. 

She smoothed out a sheaf of papers on the table. "These are the relevant contracts, if you want to check them, but the final word is that the angel guardians will be coming again to inspect the Safeways in a few weeks." 

Discontented rumbling filled the halls from the younger demons, but Zero understood. "Which angels?" he asked, scanning them. 

"The usual," she said offhandedly. Saki was young, but the contract with Heaven mandated Safeway inspections once every hundred years, and no full-blooded demon who was considered adult could be _that_ young. "It shouldn't be a big deal, but I thought you might want to browse through them, make sure maintenance is doing its job, that sort of thing." 

"I'll take the Safeways to the council room," Zero promised. "Is that all?" 

"It is," she confirmed. 

"I have no further questions." Clay nodded, as if his word were the deciding factor. 

Zero got to his feet again -- a gesture again echoed by every demon in the room -- and waved Kizna to follow him as he treaded out into the hallway swiftly. 

When the doors slammed closed, he snarled at her, "Cut that out. Why do you take me so seriously?" 

"I _had_ to. There were some six different instances during the council when your channel was tapped. I had to siphon off all the power going there. It's not easy to absorb that much magic, you know; there's only so much anybody can hold," she retorted. 

"Not _me_." 

"You don't _count_. You are a _freak_." 

Zero grinned at her, displaying a mouth full of pointy teeth. Kizna flattened her ears against her skull and bristled the fur on her tail in retaliation. Just like old times. If they weren't adults now, one of them would tackle the other and go tumbling head over tail in a playful scuffle that Zero inevitably won. 

Even when they were runts, though, his "scuffles" with Hiead had always been closer to deadly than playful. 

Correctly identifying his scowl, Kizna said thoughtfully, "You know, if we walk really slowly, and go through all the Safeways, then Lord Lucifer won't be able to blame us for the delay, and your brother will have to stand around and wait for you." 

The prospect of pissing off Hiead immediately made him feel better. "A brilliant idea, my dear girl," he said brightly. "Do you suppose we'll waste more time by walking to the entrance of the Safeways and then just poring over every single corner on our way to the exit, or should we just make our own entrance and wander them at random until we've covered the whole ground?" 

The Safeways were a system of dimensional bridges that Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory had collaborated to build across all their realms and the Earth as well. They had originally been intended merely as highways, to help immortal travelers get from one place to another without needing to cross the dangerous ground in between, but that vision had evolved as they were created. What if unauthorized individuals wound up entering the Safeways? What if humans stumbled upon the Earth-bound gates? What if someone tried to _destroy_ them? 

The final version of the Safeways was a giant tangling maze. Every path led somewhere, but probably not the place you thought it would lead. While entrances could be erected at any point by a person of sufficient power, the only exits were at specific points, heavily guarded on the outside and well-hidden on the inside, and the entry gateways were only one-way. 

In short, the Safeways weren't really very safe at all, nor were they convenient, unless you knew exactly what you were doing. 

And they were very, very easy to waste time in. 

"Let's do the latter," she answered, grinning mischievously. "After all, we wouldn't want to miss anything, so if we have to backtrack a few times to get to unreached places, that's only for the greater good!" 

"How many times do you imagine we'll have to backtrack over each road for maximum efficiency?" he asked solemnly, sketching a gate in the air with one clawed forefinger. A thin, transparent line of power remained hovering where he traced it, and began crackling as it began fusing with the Safeways even before he had finished the proper runes. 

"Three," Kizna pronounced judgement, as the stony wall swirled into a magnificent arch, the other side of which revealed a bright, sunny hillside on a spring day. The world beyond the arch was really perfectly normal, if one ignored the blood-stained patches of grass and occasional flora-embraced skull decorating the edge of the barely-visible path. "No less than three. After all, we wouldn't want to miss anything." She stepped through the arch, into the Safeway, and picked up the misplaced skull. With a casual gesture, she tossed it into the pond nearby. A scaled green hand reached out and snatched it before it even hit the water, and then was gone again. 

"No," Zero agreed. "Lucifer is really lucky to have such diligent followers as us." 

* * *

The Safeways had darkened with "nightfall" by the time Zero and Kizna finally entered Lucifer's chamber. 

Hiead knelt at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the throne, unmoving and silent. According to protocol, once one had arrived in the presence of the Lord of Hell, one must remain in the position of obeisance until everything was as desired and Lucifer allowed them all to rise. Protocol was very important in Hell; it would be Hiead's future -- or, even, his life -- if he disobeyed the few rules that were imposed upon the Higher Circles. 

So until Zero had arrived and knelt his own dedication, Hiead was not allowed to move. He was forced to make his displeasure known in subtle, non-threatening ways: the way his wings were mantled, snarling silvery condemnations; the way his tail thrashed violently against the marble floor; the way his lips were drawn back from pointed teeth in a soundless roar. Even though he faced the other direction, his ears twitched every time Zero took another step into the room, and even Zero had a moment of doubt, wondering if he'd gone too far and Hiead had lost it totally and was going to attack him no matter Lucifer's vengeance. 

Lucifer was waiting with significantly more grace. 

Zero sank to one knee, resting one hand against the lowest stair and spreading his taloned fingers out peaceably. "My Lord," he said. 

"Good evening, Zero. You have certainly made your Mother wait long enough." Her voice, as ever, revealed no emotion. 

"Aren't you going to apologize for keeping Her Lordship waiting?" Hiead sneered. 

"In truth, the reason I am so tardy is because of a favor I was doing in the service of Her Lordship," Zero snapped in return, then adding jestingly to Her, "I would never keep waiting the love of my life." 

He raised his head slightly, to peek up at Her and see what he could discern from Her expression. She stood serenely on the highest platform of the dais, a marble pillar cloaked in silken curves: cascading falls of iridescent seafoam hair, slender arch of neck and bend of elbow and roundness of hip and breast. Draping Her form was a clingy gown of white satin -- for She loved satin -- that slithered against the floor in all directions, curling and twisting with a life of its own. Her eyes, a gentle color reminiscent of a Home he'd never known, seemed to bore right through him, their soft shade marred with detached deliberation. 

"A favor?" was all She said. 

"Aye, and a legitimate one, Teela," he drawled, enjoying the way Hiead's entire body bristled at the casual use of Her personal name. "I was performing a preliminary check of the Safeways in anticipation of the upcoming angelic survey, at the request of my chancellor." 

There was a very long moment of silence while She considered this answer, and then Her head nodded, once, in answer. "This is acceptable. You may rise." 

Both Hiead and Zero shot upright, each unwilling to be in an inferior position longer than he had to be. Kizna remained huddled on the ground some way behind Zero, permitted as his second-in-command to attend the meeting but forbidden from looking upon Lucifer without reason. Zero noticed that Hiead had no ogre making a boulder-sized lump behind _him_. 

"I note that your pet is absent, Hiead," began Lucifer, clearly thinking along the same lines as Her son. "Where might Jagredg be?" 

"At the bottom of the River Phlegethon," Hiead answered stonily. His tail thumped against the floor once, a dull and meaty sound. 

Lucifer shook Her head. "I've warned you before that you're nearing the end of My patience, Dragonchild," She told him thinly. "You must have a second. If you do not, I will be forced to take reign of Vyusher from you." 

His mouth curled with displeasure, but he said nothing in argument. Zero struggled to hide his own glee at the ultimatum. Lucifer mostly let them rule over their respective territories as they wished, but Her one provision was that they always keep a second-in-command so that more than one opinion was represented in each important decision. She had approved of Zero's "council" rule, but Hiead was a constant source of trouble to Her -- he kept killing his seconds. Even Lucifer Herself was said to have a second, although no one had ever seen him or her. 

"It started with the Fenris," She continued, "who was a gift to you! She would never have displeased you, but you killed her blindly. Fine, I say. She was only a simulacrum. And since then I have allowed you to choose your own seconds, in the hopes that you didn't approve of My choices and would thrive if left to your own devices, but instead you have merely chosen a series of lambs to be slaughtered. What was wrong with Jagredg?" 

Hiead's eyes were thin gray slits in a gray mask of ice. "He was too stupid," he pronounced after a long moment. 

"Didn't you kill Sethira because she was too intelligent?" Lucifer challenged. "And Brand for not being intelligent enough, and Ys because he was not stupid enough. It's funny how many of these flaws begin to sound like mere excuses in My ears after comparing them." 

There was no response. 

She shook Her head, and turned slowly to pace back to Her throne. "I am displeased." 

A staggering criticism. The hardest blow She could strike. The only thing worse than Her displeasure was Her disgust, and -- Zero's hands curled into fists -- any demon who earned Her disgust was fair prey. It would be a death sentence: all of Hell would be upon Hiead in moments if She made public Her opinion. Zero would be the first. 

"I shall appoint him a new second," Lucifer mused aloud, "as I did in the first days. And this shall be the last. If I find him seeking to govern alone again, it be worth his life." 

Hiead's shoulders hunched in defensively, his wings flaring in an uncontrollable response to this threat. Everyone ignored him, because Lucifer was moving again, heading down the steps and sweeping past Her children before they could even face Her. Startled, both of them scrambled after Her in a most undignified fashion, and Kizna trotted quickly at Zero's heels, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor awkwardly. 

She led them all along the Safeways for a matter of minutes. The barely-noticeable paths ranging over hills and under trees was totally empty but for them; no lesser demons or guardian angels or errand-sent scampering before or beyond them. All was deserted and emptied where the royalty of Hell traveled -- it was worth one's life to be underfoot at such a time. 

When She stopped, it was apparently at random, before a murky pond. The Safeway continued over the pond, allowing one to seemingly walk on the water as one crossed along the invisible corridor; but Lucifer had stopped walking, and no one would dare to presume where Lucifer was going. 

She knelt at the pond's edge. "Little sister," She murmured, Her voice unusually gentle. "Come out and speak with Me." 

The water rippled, placid surface suddenly spasming, and a somewhat green-colored naked woman stepped out from the shallow pool. She was obviously a woman. She was quite tall, and had long, wavy hair, and an extremely round figure. The kind of round figure that ought to be illegal. There was more round than there was anything else. This woman made Lucifer -- heretical though the thought may be -- look asexual. 

Then, six more of the extremely round women emerged from the water. 

Lucifer looked pleased. "Why, you're all here. Good greetings to you, My young friends." 

"Greetings, Teela," one of them purred. 

"Yes, it's wonderful of You to come visit us." 

"Would You come for a swim?" 

"We were just visiting our dear sister; how fortunate Your timing is!" 

Hiead had once again resorted to thuggish snarling at the sound of Her name, but Zero was busy contemplating the sheer amounts of roundness, and whether or not celibacy was really worth it. Kizna, behind him, muttered, "The water can't be more than two feet deep, and it's not exactly wide or anything here. Where were they all hiding?" She didn't sound too unappreciative either, though. 

"I am actually looking for your sister, dear ones," Lucifer told them. "We are on business." 

They pouted, almost in unison. "I'll get her," the first one said, and stepped back into the water. She immediately disappeared, as though the bottom were ten feet under, even though Zero could clearly see that there were barely inches of water so close to the edge. 

He was quickly distracted. The naiads -- they _had_ to be naiads -- were giving him flirtatious smiles and come-hither looks. Suddenly, no matter how convincing the reasons might have seemed a few minutes ago, celibacy was definitely not looking like the best option. 

Kizna stepped on his tail. He nearly smacked her with his wings before she hissed, "You realize that a naiad lures men to her pond with promises of treasure or wishes granted or _sexual favors_ and then _eats him_?" 

"I knew that! And I wasn't going to be jumping into their ponds!" Zero whispered lamely, although he had indeed forgotten and was privately disappointed. 

_But it's a very good thing,>_ he thought as the water began to ripple again, steeling himself. _Can't run around having sex with everyone. I've got to conserve my power and my aura. If I don't keep it at this level-->_

He paused, dumbstruck. 

The new naiad who had appeared with the one from before was... not like her sisters. 

"Did You want something, Lord Lucifer?" the poor thing asked tentatively, her hands flying nervously from her hair (short and ragged at the edges) to her face (flushed and squinting) to her naked torso (she was thin and short and positively boyish compared to the others). 

"I have an opportunity for you, Ikhny," the Rebel said, with more kindness than Zero had ever seen from Her before. "One of My sons is in need of a second." 

The naiad called Ikhny instantly looked over at Zero with something disturbingly like hope blushing across her face. Then she noticed Kizna standing behind him, flushed, and turned instead to Hiead. 

That hope shriveled away and died under his returning glare. 

"Hiead's last second met with an unfortunate accident," Lucifer was going on, "and he needs a replacement. I thought the position might suit you better than your current state." 

"It would have to be," one of the naiads crowed. 

"That's right, that's right!" said another. "Why, she's never even brought a man to her pool, much less eaten one!" 

They all laughed mockingly while Ikhny turned several embarrassed shades. Zero suddenly found the lot of them much less attractive. Random malice towards one's weaker kin wasn't very appealing even in demon society. 

_That's what Caina is all about,>_ he thought darkly, and had a few pleasant thoughts about throwing the naiads into the ring of Hell devoted to betrayers of family. 

"It's... It's a pleasure to meet you," the shy one stammered, still reddened from her sisters' words. 

Hiead only turned to Lucifer in response, and asked Her, "Is this done now? As much as I appreciate Your aid, there is work to be done." 

"Yes, indeed," Lucifer confirmed, pacing away from the river. "And now that both My sons and both their seconds are here, We can resume." 

"We're so honored to be present," said a naiad happily. 

"But no one said anything about you," Zero pointed out, sneering. 

Kizna smirked at them, clearly feeling the same way. "I'm afraid that only Ikhny is really… worthy of being privy to this discussion." 

And for the first time, Ikhny could walk with her head held high while her sisters gaped at her jealously as their now-inferior status sunk in. 

_Check. Good deed for the day is done.>_ Zero felt almost proud of himself as he walked beside Ikhny and Kizna towards his Mother, and Hiead behind Her. 

"I called the two of you here for this purpose," She began, still walking across Safeways invisible to the ignorant eye. "To discuss with you the inheritance of this, My territory." 

Lucifer waved a casual hand at the scenery, but it was not the placid green fields and embracing warm sunlight that she indicated: it was the world beyond the illusions of the gentle corridors that she spoke of. Hell. 

It was the Succession. 

A thousand conflicting emotions rose in Zero's mind at the conversational opening, excitement and greed and wariness and bloodlust and everything he'd bottled up for as long as She had required that he play nice with his brother. But it was long past time for that cycle to finally end -- for one of them to become the true Heir of Hell. No more playing nice, no more dancing around each other, no more deliberately placing taunts that couldn't be responded to or fighting the urge to take retaliation for a petty insult. 

"It is very important that you listen to Me closely and play by My rules." Those words snapped him back to himself. She was watching them both closely, their identical expressions of anticipation on identical demons of Her own making; Her expression was stern and unforgiving. "Any action you may take contrary to My intentions will be punishable by death and immediate forfeit." 

Forfeit, of course, was much worse than death. It would be giving the title to _him_. 

"This will _not_ be a brawl, nor a free-for-all. The Succession will be decided as it should be -- by the will of the denizens of Hell." Lucifer's pearlescent eyes closed. "I have chosen a more politic arena than the battlefield." 

And, of course, by politic She meant that it was going to be a long and drawn-out affair before the Succession was decided. Zero forced himself to relax, somewhat disappointed. He'd hoped that he could look forward to waking up tomorrow with the cheerful knowledge that Hiead was dead dead dead. 

"This shall be a battle of not only brute force, but of tactics," She said, stepping lightly over a patch of red-stained grass that was going to need cleaning before the angels came. "The two of you must wage a campaign to win support first. Each clan will have one vote--" 

"Since when has Hell been a democracy?" Hiead snarled. He fell quickly silent when Her eyes descended on him with furious chill. 

Once She was satisfied that he would protest no more, She continued. "Each clan will have one vote in the matter. Each of you, I believe, currently have the support of approximately half the clans of Hell." 

According to the numbers Clay had given him at the meeting earlier, Zero realized, they were at _exactly_ half-and-half, an event which had only happened once before, in their younger days. That was probably even what She had been waiting for before triggering the Succession -- equal footing. 

"Once you have seventy-five percent of the clans behind you, you may begin to call in on that promised support. And once you reach eighty percent, you shall have free reign." 

_Free reign... to kill your brother?>_ A quick glance at Hiead showed that he was thinking the same thing. Whichever of them had the support of eighty percent of Hell first would be the only one to survive. 

It was perfect. Brilliant. Lucifer at Her best. There was no mistake -- this would be the greatest war Hell would ever see, and yet there would be no fighting; She had made it near-impossible to win, and yet impossible to abandon; their fate would rest upon the whims of the demons, and yet nothing would happen to them that would be anyone's fault but their own. 

The Succession had begun. 

* * *

The last ring of hell is for traitors, and there are four levels: Caina, for betrayers of family; Antenora, for betrayers of country; Ptolomea, for betrayers of dependents; and lastly Judecca, for betrayers of friends. For those of you who are really on the ball, you'll recognize those as the names of the four members of Vinsfeld's "Cocytus", from Wild ARMs 2. Cocytus is also the name of the River between these rings of Hell and the lesser ones. 

The Phlegethon is the river of eternal fire, which burns but does not consume. And the Forest refers to the region of Hell where suicides go, according to Dante; they become trees in the forest, and lots of assorted nasty things happen to them there, just like everywhere else in Hell. ^^ 

More on everything not explained here... later. ^_^ 

--Kay! 


	3. The Bereaved

  
The last piece of this chapter absolutely did not want to write itself. You probably won't blame it. In fact, you probably will wish it had not been written at all. But remember: all good things come to an end. Wait, that's not very reassuring at all... 

DISCLAIMER: All the copyrighted characters in this story are not mine. The original characters are -- Ernest's family, for example, was lifted directly from my AU fic "Pieces" -- except for Lady Katri, who belongs to Erin-neesama. 

WARNINGS: pairings of all three major sexual orientations. Violence, questionable behavior, and eternal damnation. Bizarre setting. Not your average mythology contained herein. Potentially offensive to very, very, very religious people, but not meant to be taken seriously. Humor and confusion and weirdness. 

PAIRINGS: all sorts. Major pairings are Garu/Ernest and Zero/Erts. Other pairings vary wildly, but include Rio/Phil, one-sided Tune>Ernest, past Gareas/Leena, Azuma/Rill, Kuro/Teela, Tukasa/Yamagi, Yamagi/Roose, Roose/Wrecka, and Roose/Wrecka/Yamagi. (I know by now I'm certainly getting weird looks from everyone.) Potential pairings include Kizna/Ikhny, Zero/Ikhny, Leena/Tune, Clay/Saki, Hiead/Wrecka, one-sided Rome>Erts, if you must Yu/Kazuhi, pretty much EVERYBODY/Roose-and-or-Wrecka... probably a few I'm missing... 

* * *

WALKS AMONG THEE   
almost a fairy tale   
by Kay Willow   
THE TALE OF THE BEREAVED 

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful and happy couple who loved each other more than anything else in the world. Now, as any young couple who loved each other with all their hearts and souls would, they wanted to have children. (They were married, of course. Children outside of wedlock! What an absurd notion! Only a true and holy union of mind and body could result in children whose souls were blessed by the One God, and both of the young people in question believed in that devoutly. Although they had allowed their passion to overwhelm them, once, before the day of the wedding, and actually dared to kiss each other, full on the lips! No tongue, thankfully, or they might have never redeemed themselves!) 

Anyway. This young couple settled down in the serene little city where they had grown up: where everyone knew their names and awaited with joy the good news. And sure enough; a year or so after the marriage, the young woman became pregnant! The whole city was alive with excitement. For such a sweet and good-natured and talented pair, they could only have, surely, sweet and good-natured and talented children! 

But when the child was born, he was actually somewhat of a disappointment. He was not dainty and beautiful; he was rather large and red-faced and loud. As he began to mature some, he did not become a dainty and beautiful child -- he became muscular and rugged and rather a trouble-maker. He didn't even have the family gift of healing. 

The people of the city didn't say anything about this child, but they clearly thought that somewhere along the line, the happy couple had done something _wrong_. And the happy couple thought so too. Perhaps it was because of that one sinful kiss so long ago? Or perhaps it wasn't a flaw with them, they said -- perhaps it was simple fate. After all, in so many fairy tales the oldest child turned out to be a problem child. They decided to wait a few years to try again, so that hopefully whatever had been wrong that first time would be fixed the second time around. 

Several years later, they tried again. And this time they were gifted with a good child: ethereally fragile and eternally well-tempered; a child who grew to be properly dainty and beautiful, winning the admiration and cooing praises of the townspeople. They watched him grow to be generous and loving and a healer of the highest degree, and everyone loved him. 

But whoever heard of the happy young couple only having _two_ sons? What kind of a fairy tale would that be? There need to be _at least_ three. 

And the young couple, who were not quite so young by now, had a third son. And this child, as well, seemed to be blessed by the One God: he was gentle in his expressions and mild in his moods, quick to smile at a charmed adult and showing signs of great magical promise. Everyone agreed that when he grew up, this tiny boy would be just as delightful as his brother. (The townsfolk liked to pretend that the oldest son didn't exist.) 

Then, one day, the infant vanished from his cradle. No sorcery, no tracker, nothing could find any hint of his whereabouts or fate. 

The loving husband and wife went into deep, deep mourning. Their youngest had been stolen from them before they had even really known him. Once their grief had been cleared away -- but never forgotten -- they knew what they had to do. 

_Become really, really, REALLY overprotective._

* * *

CHAPTER 3 

"Do you think this rosary will do?" 

"But it isn't even as nice as your current one. See how rough the beads are!" 

"I am not so selfish as to seek what is beyond my station. I would prefer this humble rosary, truthfully." 

"There is a difference between the sin of avarice and simple cooperation, you know. I am buying you a gift, a new rosary to replace the one that you broke last winter. I _want_ you to choose a nice rosary, Tune." 

Her eyes darted left, and right, and then settled on a point above his shoulder. Her lips tightened ever so slightly. "As you wish, Ernest. That man is watching you again." 

Ernest felt himself flush. "Ignore him. How about these prayer beads?" 

Ignoring him was easier said than done. The man who had introduced himself as Gareas Elidd the previous day at the scene of the accident, had a very penetrating stare. He'd also been following Ernest ever since. 

It only took moments for their cheerful little expedition to fall into disarray once Gareas had been sighted. Ernest knew that he was getting all flustered and awkward with the weight of the stranger's eyes on him; Tune herself was looking rather harried as well. Within five minutes, he'd bought her a rosary she never would've ordinarily allowed him to buy her as being far too expensive and grand. 

Then they paused. 

"How do we get out without crossing paths with them?" Tune whispered. 

Ernest had no idea. 

Gareas stood at the edge of the sidewalk, leaning against a tree and staring through the door of the shop, straight at him. He looked thoroughly roguish, with his wild green hair and his jewelry and his skin-molded leather (today's was black), and while he seemed to carry neither weapon nor mage-sigil, Ernest was not willing to place any bets on him not being dangerous. 

"Do you think there's a way out the back?" he whispered. 

"I shall ask the proprietor," she murmured in response, and scurried away, a gray-clad mouse. 

This, unfortunately, as Ernest realized too late, left him standing alone in the doorway and staring out at the ruffian who was staring in at him. Nervously, he started to edge back inside, but as if sensing that his prey was about to escape, Gareas closed in for the kill. 

"Ernest Cuore. Do you have a moment." Neither was a question. 

Sweat began to bead at the back of his neck. There was something _very strange_ about all this, and Ernest had no idea what it was. He could think of not a single person in his entire life who had affected him like this. Why did he get so nervous under that green gaze? 

"Ah. I'm kind of, well, waiting for my companion..." 

"I'll get her," volunteered the dead woman, and calmly headed off in the direction Tune had departed in. 

Ernest stared after her, torn between distress and relief. On the one hand, now he really was alone with the stranger who had been tailing him since their meeting. On the other hand... the dead woman was gone. 

Thoughtfully, Gareas said, "Let's go outside, shall we." 

_Also not a question,>_ Ernest concluded, as Gareas took his elbow and led him over to a bench. 

"Sit." 

_Maybe he doesn't know how to pose questions.>_ But he found himself sitting obediently, and rubbing the elbow that had been grabbed. Gareas' grip hadn't been painful, or even particularly unpleasant. He had strong hands. 

_Why am I thinking about his HANDS?>_ Although they certainly were very nice hands, Ernest had to admit on closer inspection. 

Then his eyes flew back up to Gareas' face as the man started talking. He felt as guilty as he had that one time when he'd been in the marketplace staring at women's breasts, trying to figure out how they fed babies with those, and his mother had caught him and explained to him that that was a very intimate thing, not for public consideration. 

"I need your help," Gareas said firmly. 

Instantly suspicious, Ernest asked, "You're not going to try and get me to heal your friend again, right? Because I regret to inform you that she is well beyond my power." 

"_No!_ I mean..." Some of that resolution withered a bit. Gareas fumbled for a sentence. "I mean, I didn't mean to ask you that. It just kind of came out. I mean, I understand that you can't heal someone who's dead. I don't know why I asked you that." 

"Because you're smooth," the woman in question said cheerfully, from nearby. Tune trailed along behind her as she approached them, and Ernest noted with concern that the nun was looking rather traumatized. She'd obviously never encountered a ghost before this one. "Introductions are finally in order, wouldn't you say, Garu?" 

"Oh, yeah." Gareas straightened again. "I'm Gareas Elidd, as I told you at the scene of the accident. This is Leena Fujimura." 

"A pleasure," Ernest murmured automatically with the politeness that had been instilled into his very bone marrow, but his mind was really buzzing with warnings. Gareas hadn't included an appellation for Leena -- was she a sister? wife? victim? -- and it was well-documented fact that ghosts could only become polarized towards a creature with a negative alignment. 

And people with negative alignment were _bad_ people. 

"I am, as you know, Ernest Cuore," he followed up his lackluster response, somewhat belatedly. "This is Tune Youg, of Fatima." 

"Oh, from the holy city," Leena exclaimed, looking pleased. "Welcome, then, Sister." She bowed politely. Clearly startled, Tune bowed back. 

"You're, like, a monk or something, right?" All three of the others turned to stare at Gareas. "What? Everyone who comes out of there is a paladin or a monk or a priest, or whatever, right?" 

Tune frowned, vaguely. "I am a nun," she said, almost pointedly, indicating her gray habit and robes. 

"Huh. Well, hail the One God, or whatever." 

Ernest was shocked. _That's practically blasphemy!>_

"So I wanted to talk to you about this curse I'm under," the oblivious man said. 

_Oh, a purpose!>_ His outrage faded quickly, replaced by fascination. Something wasn't right about what Gareas said, but Ernest was confident that it would become clear to him once he heard the full details. "What manner of curse?" 

"There was... this demon," Gareas said hesitantly, and Tune immediately made the sign of the One God before her. Ernest leaned in closer. Demons usually resulted in delicate situations, but they were -- at the least -- interesting cases. He rarely got to do anything _fun_ here in Basik. "Like, the week before Leena and I were getting married, it appeared out of nowhere and told me that she was going to die. So I made a bargain with it. Half my soul in exchange for her life." He rolled his eyes and waved. "But as you can see... here she is." 

"And the demon killed her?" Ernest clarified, frowning. 

"No -- she died like it said she would. But clearly, this was not the intended bargain. I mean, she's dead, and I'm still short a chunk of soul." 

The demon had told the truth about her death, forged a contract regarding it, and then claimed its price despite not fulfilling its half of the arrangement? Something was still missing -- that was against all the laws that bound those wretched creatures. Ernest asked carefully, "What were the exact terms of the contract?" 

"Well..." The other man hesitated, then sighed in dismay. "Half my soul, in exchange for her presence _by my side_, for the rest of my life." 

Now Ernest understood. The demon had indeed fulfilled the letter of its bargain. He asked Leena, "So you want me to help you be rid of your curse?" Small wonder they had been seeking him so desperately: wandering the world even after one's death, with neither free will nor independence, was a dire fate indeed. 

Gareas opened his mouth to agree, then did a double-take. "No, not _her_ curse. _My_ curse!" 

Ernest gave him a politely skeptical glance. "But you're not _under_ one," he pointed out. 

"I'm not?" 

"No. Half of your soul has been removed. It is as simple as that. The demon took it in a business transaction; there was no curse involved." 

"How can you be _sure_?" he countered. 

Ernest smiled in spite of himself. If this questing young man had intended that as a challenge, it was sorely misdelivered. The blond man answered matter-of-factly, "The universe cried out when you said so." 

He was hard-pressed not to laugh as all eyes turned to him blankly. Few of the ungifted could understand a healer's connection with life: in order to know what needed to be healed, he had to first know what was _wrong_, and thus healers were gifted with the innate ability to sense pain. And this applied not only to people, but to all things living: animals and monsters, plants, and even the very fabric of the universe. And the universe, in a very intrinsic way, flinched in pain whenever an untruth was spoken. 

And that is why the greater the power a being possesses, the less likely it is that he or she will lie to you. 

After a rather inelegant recovery, Gareas said, "Fine. But I'm the one we're trying to save. We want to save my soul." 

Ernest turned to Leena questioningly, and was deeply touched to see her nodding in agreement. "If Garu goes to Heaven when he dies, then my spirit will follow him, right? So better to secure both our passages instead of selfishly abandoning the sinking ship." 

"Sinking ship?" Gareas demanded. "Are you comparing my soul to a sinking ship, Leena?!" 

Ernest barely even heard him. "You have such a beautiful soul," he murmured, thinking of how much joy she must've brought to her loved ones in life. Tune, who had been silent throughout the exchange so far, was nearly in tears -- she was such a sympathetic creature; she too was moved by Leena's generosity. 

_Surely any man who has earned the devotion of such a woman can't be all bad,>_ Ernest thought hopefully, turning his attention to Gareas once more. _Perhaps he doesn't deserve the fate in store for him...>_

"I can help you," he said firmly. Both Gareas and Leena lit up happily at this news. "My family has contacts in Geheim, and a certain sorceress who lives there has sway with the demons. If I entreat Miss Katri to aid us, perhaps she and her husband can have a word with the demon in question." 

"That's wonderful!" Leena exclaimed, but Gareas still looked doubtful. 

"How do we know that'll work? I mean, asking _nicely_ for my soul back, is that really the way--" 

"It will work," Ernest assured him. "Almost all demons prefer power to souls, because the latter are easy to acquire for a denizen of Hell. In return for merely the promise of a favor or debt, they'll usually be happy to accommodate you. And demons are always willing to make a treaty of any kind." 

The young man still seemed somewhat dubious. Apparently something wasn't fitting together for him about this plan, but he said only, "Won't this put _her_ soul in danger? Katri's?" 

The answer to that seemingly innocent inquiry wandered into questionable ground. Ernest had to fight to keep his face from slipping into a disapproving frown. He _didn't_ really disapprove, not on a personal level anyway, but the reaction had been ingrained so deeply into him that it was automatic. "Miss Katri has nothing to fear from Hell," he said simply. 

Gareas still looked unsure, but had relaxed. "Thank you for your aid," he said, hesitant. "You'll send word to Geheim?" 

"Yes, as soon as I get home," he promised. "You should have your answer within two days, four at worst." 

"That's great." Gareas seemed quite satisfied now. "I'm staying at the Lakham Inn, it's right down the street." 

"I'll send Tune to you the moment I hear from Lady Katri." He had thought that would be the wise thing to say, but all at once Gareas' face fell with disappointment. Ernest couldn't understand it. What was wrong with Tune? Then Leena waved a hand in the other man's face to get his attention, leaned close and whispered to him, and then they both turned to _stare_ at the healer. 

Ernest felt the heat rising in his face. Something about those gazes made him very, very nervous. 

Finally, Gareas -- looking _terribly_ put-upon -- stammered, "Hey, um... I was wondering if you... had anything to do now, because... well, because if not, I'd like to ask you to have lunch with me. Us. Me." 

Ernest stared at him blankly. That damnable flush had worked its way down his neck. Tune was visibly frantic -- just looking at her was as good as hearing a less facially-expressive person screaming _"What would your parents say?!"_ -- and Leena gleeful. Gareas was not looking at any of them; was in fact staring at a nearby planted tree. 

So, with no viable alternative like getting hit by another random car, Ernest gave the matter thought. 

The current theory claims that all life is innately bisexual, stemming from an evolutionary step before gender. Most people lean towards, or are biologically programmed to lean towards, the heterosexual side of the scale -- which is all well and good; the world needs them -- but an undeniable few did not. This, too, was all well and good. In the days following the Collapse, there had been more important things to worry about than what particular organs your neighbor was looking for in a spouse, and the gospel of the One God reflected this: no censure had been written against any sexuality. In these happy days, everyone was extremely open-minded about alternative lifestyles, and there was almost no tension whatsoever between any of them. 

Ernest had always known himself to be a definite slant to the _left_ when it came to sexuality. As a healer, he knew himself better than most. But he had never actually put that knowledge to practice in the real world before. 

Ernest Cuore was twenty-one years old, and he had never even been asked on a date before. 

This was a very new thing for him. _Need_ he was used to: he got that all the time. People who were injured needed his physical healing -- people who were lost needed his emotional healing. _Love_, too, he was used to: his parents loved him unconditionally, as did his brother Erwin, as did all those who he had lived among for his whole life. 

But Gareas had not asked him from either of those emotions. While the romantic inside him said that perhaps need and love weren't totally unrelated, what would seem to have prompted Gareas to ask Ernest to lunch was _want_. 

Gareas _wanted_ him. That was what was in his eyes and in his mind that had unsettled the healer so. Nobody had ever wanted him before. 

He kind of liked the idea, though. 

_I'm probably overthinking things,>_ Ernest acknowledged inwardly, even as he started to smile. _He probably just wanted to delay my leaving until he figures out what's been bothering him about my proposal. He probably isn't even thinking of it as a lunch date. But it's an interesting theory, and there's always a chance...>_

"Okay," he said, and then there they stood: three grinning fools and a shocked nun. 

* * *

His parents noticed his distraction at dinner that night. 

"Is something wrong, Ernest?" his mother asked solicitously. "You seem rather flushed." 

"See how bright his eyes are," his father commented, worried. "And I have to repeat myself three times to get any response from the boy. Perhaps he has a fever." 

Ernest barely heard them. He was in love. 

Maybe it was the way he felt so special around Gareas. Maybe it was the lure of the forbidden. It certainly wasn't Gareas' manners or charm. But whatever it was, he was intoxicated by it, and he'd thought of nothing else all evening. Even the presence of Leena and Tune was insufficient to crush the romance of it. 

They had _held hands_! 

After a long, critical study, Erwin snorted and pronounced, "He's gotten laid." 

But _that_ penetrated his blissful haze. Ernest blushed so hard that he thought his ears might fall off. "Erwin!" Tomas Cuore exclaimed in shock, and then apparently lost his ability to speak entirely. Renee immediately added for him, "How could you say something like that in front of your brother and father?! You know how delicate they are!" 

Erwin scowled. "You guys are such _virgins_," he accused. "And two of you are my _parents_." 

The word 'virgin' seemed to render Tomas near-fainting. Renee took his hand consolingly and gave her oldest son a meaningful stare, which he ignored. 

"I know you guys have had sex -- at _least_ three times," he continued. "None of this can be all that new to you or anything!" 

"Erwin Cuore, that is _enough_!" 

But never let it be said that the oldest Cuore boy possessed tact. Instead of dropping the subject, he changed the topic. "And Ernest isn't you anyway. Come on, Ern. You got laid, right?" 

"_No!!_" It was small consolation that his parents were visibly sharing in his humiliation. Tune and the acolyte Davinde (Erwin's ever-present, and long-suffering, companion) were trying nobly to ignore the conversation on their end of the table. 

With a scowl, Erwin tried again. "How about a girl? You've got a girl now, that's it, right? I know it isn't Tune -- I know Davinde is fricking asexual -- but I bet that's why." 

The two attendants flinched at their names. Davinde buried his head in his hands, and Tune patted his shoulder consolingly. 

"No," Ernest repeated, not lying not lying not lying, so he needn't feel guilty. He passed a cloth napkin to Tune to give to Davinde. Holy or not, there comes a time in every man's life when the options are simply tears or murder. 

Erwin's eyes narrowed. "A _guy_?" he asked triumphantly. 

His silent blush _had_ to be a complete giveaway. 

Instantly forgetting about Erwin's rudeness, Renee clapped her hands together delightedly. "Oh, how wonderful!" She turned to her husband. "Tomas, isn't it _wonderful_? Ernest is in love!" 

Tomas smiled at their youngest, apparently oblivious to his ferociously red face and longing glances for the door. "It certainly is wonderful. Who's the lucky man? Anyone we know?" 

"Perhaps that charming young Halcion boy?" 

_Boring young Halcion boy,>_ Ernest corrected instantly, but instead of saying so or something similarly grand and dignified, he found himself stuttering. "N-- No, not him, no one you know..." How fascinating the tablecloth suddenly was! _Please, please, PLEASE let them find a new topic.>_

"Oh! Oh, Tomas!" Renee exclaimed, suddenly stricken. "If Ernest and his young man get married--" 

_Merciful One God, MARRIAGE? I met him this MORNING!>_ Ernest was a romantic, but he wasn't desperate. 

Fortunately, he didn't need to explain that, because his mother finished, "--that means _Erwin_ is our only hope for continuing the family legacy." 

The Cuores were wonderful, loving people. Their children made them extremely happy. Although they didn't quite understand Erwin, and they might wish that he was more like them, and even despite their disapproval of his behavior, they never failed to find the good in him and cherish that. How unique he was, how protective he was, how passionate he was, and how deeply he believed in justice: all of these are good qualities that the Cuores cherished about their oldest, even though he sometimes made benevolence difficult. 

But the realization that he was the speed bump in the road of their noble line was too much even for them. 

"Oh," Tomas murmured, looking suddenly faint again. "Oh no..." 

Erwin scowled at them. "I'm not _that_ bad! You people are so overdramatic." 

"The boy can't even introduce himself without a curse," Renee intoned, morbid. 

Her husband added, "And he talks with his mouth full." 

"And he isn't married yet, even though he's almost thirty now." 

"Would you two _cut it out_?!" 

"Even if he does actually marry that dear Alanna, what will they raise their children to be like?" 

Renee put her fork down and instructed Erwin firmly, "You will propose to Alanna tomorrow. We'll have the wedding in as little time as you need to avoid embarrassing her--" 

"Fuck, Mom, she takes birth control, you know!" 

"--and then you will give any and all children you have to _us_ to raise." 

"What?!" 

"Yes, listen to your mother," Tomas urged. "You can trust us to raise your children to be good people." 

"And that's why it's imperative that you marry Alanna as soon as possible, for real this time,"   
Renee concluded grandly. "So that we can take care of your children before we get too infirm." 

Erwin had turned red. He jumped to his feet and slammed a fist down on the table. "Damnit! You're already senile, both of you! There's no way--" 

Ernest took advantage of the distraction, having seen similar arguments many times before and knowing that the world would cease to exist for them outside the realm of the screaming. He slipped away from the dining hall without being noticed and breathed a sigh of relief in the air beyond. 

Unbeknownst to him, the moment he stepped outside the door, conversation fell silent in the dining room. 

"Something isn't right," Renee said after a long moment. 

"I'm worried about that boy," her husband seconded unhappily. "Why wouldn't he talk to us about this young man of his? You do know that there's never any need to keep secrets from us, don't you, Erwin?" 

Erwin rolled his eyes and tore into his meat with a savage appreciation that made his parents wince. He chewed, with his mouth open, as he said, "Of course we know. I've told you all sorts of dumbass things, and you've never been more than cross with me. Like that time when I told you about the fistfight at the McKenzie's. You only really got upset because I hit a girl, even though the little bitch was trying to gouge my eyes out at the time." 

Renee closed her eyes in pain. Tomas forced himself to move on, pretending not to have heard. "So what could he find so difficult to speak of that he needed to hide it from us? I don't understand. Are we not supportive enough?" 

"It's not our fault, Tomas," Renee said, confident. "I'm sure that there are extenuating circumstances. There's some sort of explanation. Isn't there, Tune?" 

All heads turned to the slender girl at the other end of the table. 

Tune bowed her head mutely, looking at her plate as if it held the answers to all her questions. A quick glance up at Davinde found him looking away, awkwardly. He couldn't help her; it seemed that nobody could. 

_I have to make the right decision...>_ But what was that decision? To stay true to her charge, or to follow her duty? Keep Ernest's secrets, or share them with his worried parents? Which was the greater betrayal? Could she really refuse to give her knowledge to the people who had hired her for this express purpose, just to protect the privacy of someone who was, in all essence, a child in their care? 

They only had his best interests in mind. Tune fixed that fact in her mind, and spoke. 

* * *

There was a knock on Ernest's door, just as he was getting ready to go to bed. 

"Ernest? Can we have a little chat?" 

Frowning, Ernest tugged his tunic on and crossed the room quickly. "Father, you know that your health isn't well lately since the storms have been coming. You should get more rest," he continued as he opened the door. "Remember the old catechism, who heals the healer, and--" 

Something in the quietly despaired look on Tomas Cuore's face stopped him immediately. 

"May I come in?" his father asked, muted. 

"Of... of course." He stepped out of the doorway and waved the older man in. 

Tomas stepped into the center of the room, and then appeared to lose his nerve. He hovered, gaze skipping from the bed to the chair to the windowsill before visibly deciding to remain standing. He said nothing, only staring at his son with an air almost like mourning. 

"What is it? Father," Ernest murmured, growing nervous quickly under that disconcerting expression. 

"You know how it is, Ernest," Tomas said heavily. "I understand, I suppose, why you didn't tell us about your young man..." 

His heart stopped beating; the blood in his veins turned to ice. _Don't do this.>_

"And I hope that you understand, as well, why we do what we have to do." Tomas shook his head. "We just... can't have you associating with that kind of person, Ernest." 

"We only have your best interests in mind," Renee added from the door. Ernest spun around to face his mother, but didn't make it in time. He only had time to see the carved and painted staff in her hands, raised to the heavens, before he felt the effects of the spell beginning to wrap around his body. The breath rushed out of him in one sharp exhalation as runes flickered across the back of his mind, the language of magecraft echoing in a realm beyond physical hearing -- he felt himself falling, hitting the ground, crying out -- 

And then there was nothing. 

* * *

Hahahaha. Ha. *hides* 

"Basik" is an obvious reference to basic, fundamental: "basikos" means "fundamental people". Serenity is obvious; Vyusher and Geheim and all the others will be explained in their time. More information on the demon-kin that Zero's group are will follow, as will information about the Collapse and everything else. It'll all come in time. 

Next chapter: We switch over to Erts, meet some Seniors, fail to meet other Seniors, and find out more about the mysterious Lady Katri! 


	4. The Changeling Child

Again, gratitude goes out to "Chibi" for poking me with a sharp stick when I got too lazy. ^_^ Also thanks go out to Erin-neesama -- even though all the MK characters belong to Sugisaki Yukiru, Katri Kanopolous belongs to her, as do her family and much of the minor inspirations contained here -- for helping me RP two specific incidents. You haven't seen either yet, but I feel that they ought to be noted. ^^ 

* * *

WALKS AMONG THEE   
almost a fairy tale   
by Kay Willow   
THE TALE OF THE CHANGELING CHILD 

Once upon a time, a child was born to a happy and loving young couple. This child seemed to be blessed by the One God: he was gentle in his expressions and mild in his moods, quick to smile at a charmed adult and showing signs of great magical promise. Everyone agreed that when he grew up, this tiny boy would be just as delightful as his older brother. 

Perhaps this child sounds familiar. 

But there was another couple, neither happy nor loving. This husband and this wife were not exceptionally fond of each other, and the oracles said that their marriage was destined to be childless, and they had discovered that their greatest happiness together came from the suffering of others. So when this second couple learned of the first couple, and their happiness and their love and their three happy and loving sons, the unhappy couple's natural reaction was to want to _destroy_ them. 

They kidnapped the newborn child. 

The child was raised in a household devoid of affection, where the only attention he received was negative. He was taught values and behaviors that went against all his innately generous nature: sacrifice others to get what you want, trample everyone in your path, never forget a grudge, power is worth the price of heart and soul. 

Yet in spite of this harsh environment, the child grew to be a sophisticated and merciful young man. The kind of person who would have made his true parents proud. 

Naturally, this displeased his foster parents. They did all that they could to crush his spirit. They refused to allow him any friends, sent him to a school where he would be mocked and isolated because of his kindness, and criticized him for every friendly word. But still, despite their efforts, the child's soul remained both strong and pure. 

Frustrated, the unhappy couple realized that perhaps their unwilling son would never lose the wholesomeness that seemed to be ingrained upon his soul. Even as his sole influence, their corruption could only touch him on the surface. 

And so eventually, the unhappy couple gave up. What did it matter, anyway? Their plans for the boy could only be improved by his innocence...   


CHAPTER 4 

"Master. That girl is looking at you again." 

Erts closed his eyes, counted to five slowly, and then turned the page of his book. "Yes, Imp. I know." 

"She is watching you with her dark eyes, Master." Tiny claws scrabbled at the heavy cloth covering his shoulders as Imp clambered to a better viewpoint. A thin leathered tail wound nimbly around Erts' neck. 

"I know, Imp." 

"She is moving, Master." The tip of the tail twitched, tapping Erts' cheek softly. "She's coming here, Master." 

"I can see her, Imp." She was smiling and waving at him. In school-issued thick black robes tailored specifically to flow and billow, she was hard to miss. 

Imp suggested hopefully, "I could kill her for you, Master." 

"No, Imp," Erts replied evenly, standing up and brushing off his own robes. "We're not going to kill Rome." 

It was a beautiful morning in the city of Geheim. But it usually was, because the climate of Geheim was controlled by the Higher Council of Magic, and the Count of Geheim used his sorcery to enforce this artificial weather. 

That was the standard there. Geheim was a city where everything was carefully crafted and molded into the "correct" form. Nothing was natural there -- not even, nine times out of ten, the people who lived within its walls. 

"Hello, Rome," he greeted warmly. 

"Have you heard about what happened to Yoshino?" she asked immediately, eyes wide in concern. Erts waved at his shoulder meaningfully, and after a bewildered pause, she added, "Oh. Good morning, Imp." 

The little demon hissed, unhappy, and Erts was briefly glad that such minor demons could not be seen or heard by anyone other than the one who had bound it. She probably was expecting him to relay Imp's response, so instead he prompted, "Wasn't he visiting his sister?" 

"Yes, in Basik." Attention successfully diverted, Rome's expression softened in sobriety. "There was an accident while he was there. Una told me that he was hit by a car." 

"He was _what_?" The concept was positively surreal. Imp snickered into his ear. 

"I know. It's so terribly unlikely, but... well, there it is." She shrugged, helpless. "He was in a clinic in Basik until yesterday, when Dean Reichmann went there and brought him back home. Una said he'll be back in class today." 

Imp tugged on the collar of Erts' robes. "Yoshino is that boy, right?" Everyone was 'that boy' or 'that girl' to Imp. "I did not like him, Master. This pleases me." 

Erts ignored him. "That's horrible... But he's back in school, so he can't be that badly hurt, right?" 

Rome nodded. "The healers in Basik are supposed to be among the best in the world. Una said that he's still got an arm in a sling, but he's otherwise hale and whole." 

"Una said Una said Una said," Imp muttered darkly. "Why does Una know so much? I should kill her." 

Explaining Una's death-defying, worshipful crush on Yoshino would be utterly futile. Imp was not and had never been human -- it was a spirit-demon created of condensed darkness. Suspicion, hatred, scorn were its lifeblood; trouble and misery and pain its air. Something like love -- even something like puppy love -- could not be taught to it by a mere human. 

Noticing Erts' sudden weariness, and rightly guessing its cause, Rome shook her head. "Why do you bring him to class with you? It's not allowed, and seems inconvenient." 

"It _is_ inconvenient, but can you imagine what might happen if I left it on its own?" he asked, ignoring Imp's renewed snarling. But she couldn't imagine, couldn't even comprehend the creature as having no gender, so he added, "The death toll would number in the dozens. Besides, you know that the rule is only there to keep people from making trouble, and we all know that I'm not exactly going to be wreaking havoc." 

He smiled at her reassuringly as the bell rang and all the myriad students of Astutia Academy began the trek inside. "You have Traditional Witchcraft first, right?" 

"Yes," Rome confirmed, rolling her eyes as she fell into step beside him. "With Professor Garland." 

"I have Logic in Magic..." 

"You poor thing! Such a class so early!" 

"That's not the worst part," he laughed. "I have it with Aracd and Force." 

"How do you ever get anything done?" 

"We don't!" 

They came to a halt outside of the entranceway, letting the crowd flow around them and leave them behind, untouched. Their classes were in opposite directions. Rome looked to the ground shyly and brushed a strand of hair that had come loose fro her braid back behind her ear. Erts sighed inwardly and wished, not for the first time, that things hadn't come to this point between them. She was his only real friend -- but that was all she was. 

"I suppose I'll see you in Practical Theurgy, then," she began. 

Erts frowned. "Rome, I really think you should drop Theurgy." 

"No," she said stubbornly. 

"Rome! You are _failing_ that course, and miserably," he reminded her. "Professor Perry said that you have almost no chance at passing; it's just bringing down your average--" 

"I know I'll summon something this week," she insisted. "I'm really close." 

He couldn't help pitying her. It had been months since their class had been assigned their first attempt at summoning, and Rome had then and had since been completely unsuccessful. By now the rest of the class had moved from spirit-demons to elemental and animal forms, and next semester would progress to the true demons; yet Rome couldn't even make the magical circle function correctly, much less summon up an actual demon. 

The only reason she remained in the class, despite her lack of aptitude for the subject, was because it was Erts' main area of concentration -- and the only class they shared together. 

But it was different for him. He had a natural flare for it (only appropriate, considering that it was a Cocteau family specialty) and had summoned his first demon at the age of ten. By thirteen, he had bound Imp to him by contract, and in truth, the Practical Theurgy class was practically remedial for him. 

He shook his head and said nothing. There was nothing to say. 

Rome asked hesitantly, "Why don't we meet after Theurgy? We can eat lunch together." 

Erts sighed. "I'm sorry, Rome. You know that I have to return home for lunch. My parents will have a fit if I eat at school." 

"But I don't understand _why_," she pressed, ignoring the second bell as it rang and marked them both late for class. "You barely have enough time to get across the city and back, much less to eat, during the lunch break! Why do they make it so difficult for you?" 

"Because eating here would allow me to have real friends," he said wryly. "I'm really sorry, Rome -- I have to get to Logic in Magic." He fled before she could ask him for more. 

Professor Indalecio wasn't present yet when Erts edged into the classroom. He assumed his seat as quietly as he could, but the subtlety was pointless, because the entire room was drowned in noise and motion. Imp flattened itself against the back of his head and hissed in nervousness. 

He could make out Aracd somewhere in the midst of it, and Kyoko on the other side of the room shouting at all the students to ignore her hated adversary and listen to the class president. That didn't have much effect: Bellarcha, the class president, was sitting in a corner reading a book and ignoring everyone. 

Carres was sitting in her seat, looking pale and muted. She was alone. 

That was rather alarming. Usually, Carres was the queen of the social scene, and had nearly as much of a crowd as Aracd did. And she was always -- without fail -- accompanied by her boyfriend Force. 

"Where is Force?" he murmured under his breath. 

"I do not know, Master. If I go to look, may I kill him?" 

"That was a rhetorical question, Imp." 

Then, misfortune of misfortunes, Aracd spotted him. 

"Yo! Erts!" 

It wasn't that Aracd wasn't likable, Erts told himself at least twice a day, once during Logic in Magic and again during Theurgy. It was that Aracd was the epitome of the very falseness that Geheim so often fostered, and that Erts hated so much. Aracd pretended to be friendly and playful and forgiving, but it was only a pretense. The moment one's back was turned, he would leap at the opportunity to stab it and take one's place. All his good cheer was a mask, hiding maliciousness and predatory intent. 

Erts hated the feeling of being hunted. If he wanted to be paranoid, he's start listening to Imp. 

Now if only he didn't attend the wing of Astutia Academy that dealt with the black magics and dark arts... 

"Hello," he said neutrally, thinking, _Maybe if I'm boring enough, he'll go away.>_

"You heard the latest?" 

"Yes." 

"No you haven't," Aracd disagreed amiably, sliding into the seat behind him. "Not Yoshino. Force. You hear about Force?" 

He _could_ say yes again and make Aracd leave, but on the other hand, Aracd seemed to be borderline psychic in his ability to know where he had opportunity to plague him. And he _did_ want to know, so he shook his head mutely and waited for the uncontrolled outpouring of information. 

"Well, he was in the basement of his place, and you know his family's old magick, like yours. He finds this book, called _Rituals of Assuming and Honoring the Greater Spirit_ or something--" 

Erts knew the book well. It was in his family's library, as well, and he'd had the whole thing memorized by the time he turned fifteen. 

"--and in the back there's this section on _how to summon the prince of Hell_," Aracd added with audible delight. 

It seemed to Erts that everything stopped at those words. "The prince..." he echoed weakly. Imp whimpered. 

"Yep. Prince of Hell. They call him Dragonchild, because legend says that his natural full-blown demon form is a huge nasty dragon, but of course we don't get _dragons_ here in the mortal world, so he takes on this half-form." Aracd settled back comfortably in his chosen seat. "I've seen pictures. All big leather wings, and big pointed ears, and claws and fangs... Fucking gorgeous. You can feel his power burning right through the scrolls." 

Another unnerving thing about Aracd was his ambition; power, and the promise of personal power, was the only thing he found attractive. That sort of mercenary attitude was extremely off-putting for Erts, although he dared not show it -- and although he didn't entirely disagree. 

"So. Force decides to _summon_ the Dragonchild." Aracd paused dramatically. 

Imp was nearly incoherent with horror at the very concept of one of the random humans its master associated with attempting to call upon one of the most feared demons who had ever lived. It clutched Erts' robes with all the might in its tiny little claws, and buried its face in his hair. Erts himself waited with a tense expectation, as if waiting for Aracd to say... 

"And the Dragonchild _ate_ him." 

There was a long moment, following that, of sheer, stunned silence. "Force was... eaten by a demon prince?" Erts forced himself to ask, mildly. 

"Yeah, that's what his parents told Carres." 

Imp _exploded_ into the most hideous cackling laughter Erts had ever heard in his life. 

Aracd was shaking his head. "Pathetic, huh? It isn't like we haven't been told a thousand times that the greater summons aren't to be attempted unless you're fucking _sure_ you can do everything right." 

"Well... what did he do wrong?" Almost immediately, Erts realized that this had been a strange thing to say; Aracd gave him a curious look, as if to say 'How could it not have been wrong?', and he tried his best to look like he was asking merely in professional curiosity. The truth was something he couldn't afford for anyone to know. 

In the end, the upperclassman obliged him. "They say that he drew the circle correctly and the power flow worked, but he was an asshole and decided to hold back in the exchange. The prince decided that he wasn't getting enough power to accurately balance the favor he was doing by deigning to acknowledge the call. With the breach of contract established, he could do whatever the hell he wanted, and he ate Force. I say good riddance..." 

At that moment, the door flung open and Professor Indalecio stormed in, furious and shouting at the students to sit down before he rearranged their collective molecular structures into something far less prone to screwing around. 

The next time Erts left his concentration mode and started actually thinking for himself, it was Theurgy, and something out of the ordinary had happened. 

The woman who stood in place of their usual Theurgy professor was both unexpected and out of place. She wore a simple dress of black with a large white collar, and she looked serene, patient, and understanding. Astutia Academy had professors like that, true -- but not teaching this branch of sorcery. In this branch of sorcery, any moment of softness or mercy was liable to get you a one-way ticket to Hell in the grip of the demon you'd thought you were being easy on. 

"Who is that?" Rome asked him immediately upon her arrival, staring wide-eyed and confused. "What happened to Professor Perry? He isn't sick, is he?" 

"He didn't say anything," Erts confirmed. In a college of magecraft, where scrying the future was an activity that students did daily to find out whether they should bring rain coverings or not, it was a simple matter for a teacher to know if he was going to be sick the next day so he could cancel the class in advance. 

Therefore... 

"I am Katri Kanopolous," she introduced herself when the students were settled. "A special guest speaker come from the renowned Violetta's Finishing Academy to speak to you on summoning theory." 

_Oh, I get it. It's because of Force.>_ He wondered, disinterestedly, if Rome had heard about it yet. 

It wasn't until the demon melted out of the wall behind their guest speaker that Erts suspected that perhaps this warning lesson was more important than he had initially assumed. 

* * *

"Katri Kanopolous? Not the same Katri Kanopolous who married Charon..." 

Erts shrugged out of his ceremonial outer robe. It clunked to the floor, weighted down by the spellcast-lead sewn into the hem. "I'm pretty sure there's only one Katri Kanopolous," he said wryly. "The fact that she has an extremely powerful demon husband _would_ support the theory that she is the same Katri Kanopolous who married the Gatekeeper of Hell, wouldn't you say?" 

The sound of powerful tail meeting heavy wood desk was accompanied by a sickening crack. "Greater men than you have died for addressing a demon prince so disrespectfully," Zero intoned darkly. 

Being a theurgist tended to dull one's receptivity to threats (not to mention normal human survival instincts) rather quickly. Ignoring that comment with the ease of long practice, Erts stepped closer to examine the desk. "Look at this," he mourned. "You've cracked it. Must I remind you how valuable all the artifacts in this room are? Again?" 

Zero hunkered down and ran clawed fingers over the scarred surface. "Do your crackpot parents really think this is impressing anyone?" he asked doubtfully. 

Erts shook his head and said nothing. They did, as a matter of fact -- they insisted that the wealth would make their summoned demons think of them as wiser and superior than poorer sorcerers. Erts had always privately believed that if anything, it was the opposite. Anyone with the money to buy the correct supplies could summon a demon; the only people who needed ingenuity to summon were those without substantial income. 

"All these stupid rituals," Zero continued. He leapt off the table and rocketed across the room on carefully-controlled wings. He grabbed onto a wall fixture and hung there, dangling. "Like this channel. What sort of spell would you be casting to require an iron channeling rod? Only a spell affecting weather, like storm-calling. And every idiot knows that you do that _outside_." 

With no small amount of amusement, Erts watched him swing distractedly. It never failed to hold his attention, how very _odd_ a creature Zero was. His narrowly-pointed face was nearly drowned by a mane of unruly black hair -- once, in a fit of boredom, he had asked Erts to brush it; the strands were stiff and coarse, more like hemp than anything else -- and his gray skin and gray eyes gave him an oddly monochromatic appearance, like a monster lost in cement or conjured directly from a pencil sketch. 

Yet everything about him was alive. He was always moving, always talking, always thinking. 

"As a matter of fact," the demon observed shrewdly, dropping suddenly to the floor, "the possession of such a rod might even be considered illegal. Climate control is restricted to Council members according to Converan City Provision 68 Section D. There might be trouble if word of this gets out, you know." 

_Ah,>_ Erts thought, barely hiding his delight. _He's moving fast this evening.>_ Unhurriedly, Erts moved into the center of the hexagram that he had lain for the summoning. The simple sandals and drawstring pants he wore now that he had shed the ceremonial robes did not smudge the delicate design. Very picture of glowing confidence, he countered, "It's not functional. Master Liuh of the Third Seat tried to buy it from Hiram a while back, to repair it, but Dora wouldn't part with it. She thinks it adds atmosphere." 

Zero harrumphed. "I think a slumbering snake god would be much better at casting this whole basement into despair than a gothic outcropping," he volunteered, and wandered away. "What about this?" He kicked the ceremonial robe. The fabric caught on one long, curving talon. "What possible purpose could this have, as opposed to normal and more functional clothes?" 

"The metal," Erts admitted. "There's metal in the hems, with magical enhancements. They lend to the mage's aura and he can borrow their power to perform the summoning without exhausting his own energies. It's generally considered a requirement, because they make him feel stronger than he really is, so that the summoned demon thinks twice before trying to attack him." 

"You think a few strips of lead are going to keep you safe from _me_?" Zero bared his fangs. 

"Certainly not, O Eminent One," Erts answered, inserting just the right amount of good humor into his voice. He liked to think that he knew Zero well enough to know exactly where his limits were. "But it's part of the tradition, and I wouldn't want to insult you by slighting the honorifics." 

A quick bark of laughter was his response. "You play the supplicant real well, but I don't buy that respectful crap for a minute." Zero assured him. "So, where were we? I believe you were telling me about Kanopolous?" 

"Have you met her?" 

"Sure, sure. Smart chick, brown hair, no-nonsense attitude. Takes everything in stride, can't ruffle a feather on her. This sound like your new prof?" 

"Quite similar," Erts agreed. "This must be the same woman." 

"Don't you have a classmate with history in the lineages?" Zero said distractedly, studying the bookshelves. He'd seen all the titles a dozen times before, but he liked to amuse himself by pretending not to be interesting in what they discussed. "Why not ask him?" 

"That's true, Force's family is old magick, but I highly doubt I'll be able to ask him anytime soon..." Which reminded Erts about Force's unfortunate fate. 

It was common knowledge that when bargaining with a demon for anything, no matter how insignificant, one should never approach it head-on. Information was no different. But Erts didn't believe in taking circuitous routes when a simpler one would suffice -- and besides, Zero was different. 

His foster parents would have had coronaries just hearing them say the words, but he doubted they would approve even of his conversational partner, so he ignored that. "Aracd told me in class today that Force summoned a demon prince." 

Unexpectedly, for a single fraction of a shocked second, all Zero's motion stopped. It seemed like an impossibility, like the concept of absolute zero itself, that Zero should simply stop for any period of time. 

Before Erts had a chance to be more than taken aback by it, a quick bark of laughter and a feverish flurry of motion ended the stillness. Zero dropped to all fours, launched himself up to the channeling rod and flipped around it, then crouched gargoyle-esque on the top of it. He grinned ferociously as he leaned over the edge to peer down at his human summoner, tail lashing with mischief. "Hiead! It must've been Hiead, because I _know_ it wasn't me, I would've noticed. That's _great_! He actually got summoned! That hasn't happened in almost nine hundred years -- the spell is really loose, you know, it doesn't guarantee which of us will be called; heck, most humans don't even know there's two Dragonchildren. Hiead usually ignores every call that goes to him, so this Force guy must've had a whole host of power at his disposal." 

_Or just a robe with lots of enchanted steel.>_ But Zero was quick to take offense when prior points were turned back against him, so Erts chose not to share that impertinent thought. "Word is that Force was eaten." 

Zero's tail smacked into the channel with enough force to rattle it. "Figures. He likes eating when he gets summoned, especially since there's so many convenient humans nearby to feed him. And the theurgist missteps once, and..." He snapped his jaw shut toothily in illustration, and smirked at the blond. Erts utterly ignored the unsubtle hint. 

"You're no fun," Zero complained, and swooped down to stand, more normal. He looked grim. "It's a shame, really; if your dumb friend hadn't made enough mistakes that Hiead could kill him, I could've used that against my darling brother." 

For a moment, Erts felt a twinge of guilt. Zero desperately needed some kind of advantage on Hiead -- and it was his fault. 

Without warning (was there ever any warning, with such an impetuous creature as this?) Zero's attitude shifted back to eagerness. "Hey, did I tell you about this morning?" 

"No, not yet." Interest quickly replaced it. He was always the one talking to Zero; the demon prince never talked about his own life in return. "What happened?" 

"See, there's this imp--" Zero cut himself off and gave a quick scan around the room. Zero was aware of Erts' familiar demon, although he had never met Imp personally; the little creature was too terrified at the prospect of meeting its ultimate master in the flesh, and usually when Erts returned from their chats, he found his pet hiding under the most voluminous cloak in his possession. Nevertheless, the Dragonchild was aware of, and wary of, this sole other demon in contact with his 'investment'. Restlessly, he lashed his tail, and then picked up the narrative. "A real imp, a damned soul that chose of his own free will to ally with Hell. Not like your thing -- an elemental, a dark-spirit." 

"I know the difference between a dark elemental and an imp," Erts snapped, making sure that his voice contained just a hint of outrage. He was honestly insulted at the slight to his intelligence, and even though he was accustomed to hiding his true emotions, it had been his experience that Zero responded best when it was obvious how he really felt. "When I bound Imp to me, I was _young_, Zero. I was _thirteen_, and I didn't know how to tell the difference on sight. But I'm not _stupid_." 

One of the most telling characteristics of the Dragonchildren was their ears: extremely long and thin, elven in appearance. Occasionally they would perk into a vague semblance of 'upright', but the muscles and tendons that controlled their movement were not really strong enough to support their own weight, leaving them almost perfectly perpendicular to the demon's skull. When the Dragonchildren were unhappy or vulnerable or otherwise gentled from their usual take-charge behavior, their ears actually sagged. 

Zero's ears were bizarrely low, sinking to his jaw line in regret. He muttered under his breath, "It was an uncreative name anyway," and slunk across the room to pretend to study a statuette that Hiram had brought back from New Foundland. 

Erts waited patiently for an apology. 

"There's this imp," Zero began again, doggedly. 

_Oh, well. An apology is too much to ask for from the illustrious Prince of Hell.>_ There was a time to push one's luck, and a time to let things slide, and Erts was too professional not to know where that line was drawn. 

When Erts made no objections, Zero's ears drifted back upwards, resuming a more cheered position as he explained with audible relief, "Named Yamagi. He's a pal. We picked him up a short while ago. He's Tukasa's plaything." 

"Tukasa...?" 

Zero shook his head, like an overgrown dog. "I haven't told you about my followers at _all_, have I? Tukasa's a siren. Doesn't do much, just sits around and looks pretty and elegant and tall. Hums sometimes, but she can't talk, or I'll tear out her fucking vocal cords, because even when she doesn't meant to she winds up manipulating others with her song. Not her fault, but hey, it's not my fault that I'm her boss, and you don't manipulate your boss. It's worth your life, trying that shit on your superior." He scowled, and his eyes slid to Erts momentarily before flitting away again. Leathery wings wrapped around him and settled like a cloak resting comfortably around his shoulders. 

The demon picked up smoothly. "Anyhow. She's the one who picked Yamagi out, shaped him up, polished him, and dragged him to court. Roose and Wrecka -- I _know_ I told you about them, the sluts? -- are the ones he mostly imprinted on, because they had sex with him, but it doesn't matter how frisky they're feeling. An invisible thread binds him to Tukasa. All she has to do is open her mouth and he's hers." 

Erts got the feeling from Zero's previous words that it was a given that a siren could have anyone she wanted by merely opening her mouth, but said nothing. 

"So, now you know those crackers. The others are Clay -- he's a gorgon, wears glasses so he doesn't kill anybody by accident, takes care of the Book of Life and Death, works in the Hall of the Damned--" 

"Book of Life and Death?" 

"Yeah, one of the Greater Books." Zero grinned. "Funny story about those books, because three of them are the same book -- Hey, stop distracting me, or I'll never get this story told... Clay's in my camp, and so is Saki. She's youkai: they're these eastern demons, and Saki's got six pointed ears and seven horns in a crown formation. Kinda unusual, really." 

"I would imagine," Erts murmured under his breath, amused. 

"So, that's my Horde. We were all together this morning for breakfast, and talking about current affairs. Then Clay, who's been telling Yamagi what he should write for his apology to your Guild, says..." 

With fascination, Erts listened and took in every detail he could, asking after ones he didn't understand. Zero displayed uncharacteristic amounts of patience and entertained every question he was asked: no, Lucifer and Satan were not the same person, Satan was an administrative officer of almost as much authority as the Dragonchildren, whereas Lucifer was Herself; yes, Zero already did rule half of Hell in actuality and not just name; yes, there really were two different halves of Hell, at least ever since the Collapse. 

The actual territory of Hell was a virtual unknown to mere mortals. The only people who had ever been there were the most powerful of sorcerers, not inclined to give away their secrets, and deceased souls, who understandably did not emerge again to share what they saw there. Even though Erts had spoken to Zero about his personal life many times in the past seven months, Zero had never once gone into detail about his own. 

Here, all of a sudden, was the demon prince, chattering animatedly about his trusted advisors and friends, laughing, telling about how Satan and Clay had been all but spitting at each other in fury over a discrepancy in their respective Greater Books. 

At long last, Erts felt like whatever it was that they had was evening out -- becoming less master-servant, less demon-mortal, and more a meeting of equals. 

"And I just thought, how could I ask for anything more? You know what I mean?" 

Erts smiled to himself. "I know exactly what you mean," he murmured. 

* * *

Reference notes! 

Sirens are faye who were banished from the mortal plane for cannibalism. It wasn't REALLY cannibalism -- a siren eating a human isn't eating one of her own kind, since she's faye, and sirens don't actually feed on other faye. But the humans felt it was a justified decision anyway, and so to Hell the sirens were condemned. 

There are six Greater Books, as Zero says; they defy all logic, the highest orders of magical books, seemingly normal but containing impossible knowledge within them. One of them is in Hell: the Book of Life and Death, which Clay holds. It tells him the distribution and state of all the souls in Hell. There is also a Book of Life and Death in Purgatory, and another one in Heaven; the three books carry the same kind of information, for their respective areas. Purgatory also has the Book of Fate, which contains within it the future of all existence, not to mention mortals and other such life-forms. Heaven has two additional books: the Book of Days, in which is written everything that has ever happened in all of history, and the Book of Space and Time, in which is written all the truths and secrets of the universe. The Book of Space and Time is the most powerful of all the Greater Books. 

Now that that trivia is done with... ^^ 

--Kay 


End file.
